Posts
Andre A. Pais:
Awareness cannot be independent or separate from the appearances it knows. If it was, there could be no connection between knowing and known - and thus no experience could arise. All perception must be non-dual, despite having [conceptually] implicit in its functioning a subject and an object.
Awareness cannot be independent or separate from the appearances it knows. If it was, there could be no connection between knowing and known - and thus no experience could arise. All perception must be non-dual, despite having [conceptually] implicit in its functioning a subject and an object.
But if awareness is not separate or independent from the
appearances that are known, it must be as transient and fluxing as the very
appearances that are known. There is no sensible way in which one single thing
(in this case the [conceptual] union of awareness and appearances) can have a
split nature or a contradictory way of being.
These being the case - that no awareness exists outside
of the arising appearances; and that awareness is thus of a transient nature -,
it follows that all there ever exists is the self-knowing, self-luminous
appearances, free of an observing or knowing subject beyond themselves, meaning
that awareness, mind or any knowing principle are merely beliefs imputed on the
flow of naturally luminous appearances.
It follows that we are not experiencing an external
reality (naive realism), nor a mental representation (scientific materialism),
nor even modulations of our own awareness (most non-dual traditions). There is
actually no experiencer, no witness, no observer, no center or core, no knower
- and no awareness (as awareness is always posited as "that which
knows"). Let's allow that to sink in. This is one of the most powerful
insights available to us.
What this means is that there isn't even perception going
on. There is no one perceiving anything. The dualistic idea of perception
itself is merely conceptually constructed and imputed onto pure manifest
activity. What appears is reality as it is - as real, authentic and direct as
it gets. Luminosity arises naturally and dependently, empty of any duality of
knowing and known, mind and matter, inside and outside, subject and object,
etc. Curiously, if one had to choose between the reality of either subject or
object, the presence of the "objective world" would be far more
undeniable than that of any subjective entity.
Further investigation must happen as to deeply understand
the unestablished, empty and merely transient nature of what appears. This will
help clarify the answer to "what is this?". However, the main
question of all spiritual traditions, "who/what am I?", is answered
when reality is understood as being without any observer, experiencer or entity
of any kind and thus free of knowingness itself (and its ideas of "distorted"
or "undistorted" perception).
