Name: Rogelio
Location: Spain
Hello, Mr. Lucille, Thank you for your time. I feel I´m seriously stuck in a loop, so any comment would be greatly appreciated. My current experience is not one of finding a real “I”, but one of complete dissapearence of a “subject”. Scary situation. I´ll ellaborate: When I look at any “object”, let´s say a tree, I have the certainty that there´s nobody looking at it from “here”. No subject at all. The tree is an arising in consciousness and it does it on its own accord, so to speak.Of course, there are lots of thoughts related to my this body/mind, but if a thought appears claiming the ownership of the perception, it is obvious that the thought is just another perception. There´s this magical display arising in Consciousness, a whole world of short-lived subjects and objects , but it feels like I´m watching a movie. I don´t feel there´s a cristalyzed “I” inside of it as an actor, nor outside as an observer. So right now, all there is is Consciousness appearing to “nobody”. Quite frightening, to be honest, since there´s nothing to lean on. Then, when I step back and look at the source of all this arisings , I obviously find that all of them only appear in the waking state , so I´ve been following the old Ramana/Nisargadatta kind of practice, you know, abiding in the “I Am feeling”, (and by that I don´t mean watching the “contents” of Consciousness, but the pure feeling of existence or beingness that arises with the waking state and dissapears during deep sleep). The results are even more strange: I feel that this waking state sensation, the “I Am” feeling, is like a floating ghost too. I mean, I don´t feel that I am that sense of beingness at all. This sense of beingness is clearly a perception too! One that appears in the waking state and dissapears in deep sleep. . But (and this is the main problem) I cannot say I perceive this sense of beingness, because in my present understanding, even this sense of beingness is arising in front of nobody, since I cannot find an ultimate observer to this sense of existence. In other words, when I pay attention to the I Am, I know what I am NOT, but I don´t know exactly what I really am. I could say that I am that which is aware of the “I Am feeling” and of its dissapearence in deep sleep , but those are just words, they don´t clearly explain what I really am, (if I really am something…) I don´t want to repeat like a parrot that I Am Turiya, Awareness, the Ayn, or whatever term I may use. That´d be second-hand knowledge and I´m done with books and other people´s relates. Again, I´d be very grateful if you could shed some light on this questions.
Dear Rogelio,
Let me first congratulate you on the discoveries you have made so far. They show that you are earnest and smart in your quest.
Now, obviously, there is consciousness being aware of the I-thought, but also of the I-feeling and everything else. And this consciousness is obviously you, since you are the one who is aware of those, it is not somebody else who is having these perceptions. The fact that you cannot locate or perceive this I AS AN OBJECT, as frightening or disappointing as it may be, doesn’t mean you cannot perceive it AT ALL. You have to get used to it, awareness has no shape, no contour, no components, and cannot be assigned a position in space or time, which doesn’t imply it doesn’t exist…or rather yes, it doesn’t exist, IT IS, which is much better, for that which exists can go in and out of existence, whereas that which IS never ceases to be.
That which you can derive from your investigation so far is that there is no evidence and there cannot be any evidence that consciousness is limited in any way, or conditioned by space or time. That opens up the possibility that it isn’t. For this possibility to become your experience, a total surrender of everything you know or want or hold on to will be required. This experience is the revelation of eternity, love, splendor which puts an end to the misery of becoming.
Love,
Francis
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