The Sun Does Not Rise or Set

Also see: What All Religions Have in Common: Light
The Transient Universe has a Heart
Vipassana Must Go With Luminous Manifestation
The Unbounded Field of Awareness
Fully Experience All-Is-Mind by Realizing No-Mind and Conditionality
Exertion that is neither self-imposed nor imposed by others
Actual Freedom and the Immediate Radiance in the Transience

It's not often that I get to walk in dark places in Singapore, there's street lights everywhere. Yesterday I was walking somewhere that was dark and yet the light of boundless presence was so dazzling. Truly, there can be no darkness when your whole body-mind-universe is light, the light that 'outshines' all lights and darknesses, and yet is also none other than the lights and darknesses, the sounds and the silence.

Was reminded of a verse in the Upanishads, "Verily, for him who thus knows this Brahma—Upanishad, the sun does not rise or set. For him it is day for ever."

Can Consciousness Ever Be Without Experience?

Andre A Pais:

Geovani Geo existence is the nature or characteristic of existing phenomena. Without phenomena that exists, where is existence to be found? That's like believing we can find the shape of a body without the body... 😊

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A question arises, though. Can consciousness ever be without experience? We know experience cannot arise without consciousness, for experience requires a sensitive field capable of registering it. But is the opposite also true – that is, is a consciousness empty of any type of experience possible? The answer is no. Consciousness too cannot exist without experience, for if it did, it would be conscious of no thing. A consciousness that is not conscious of anythingis not conscious at all.Something that is not conscious at all is therefore unsuitable to be posited as consciousness at all.

Awareness and experience are, indeed, synonymous – which can have some remarkable consequences. Experience without awareness is simply not possible. However, one could try to picture awareness without experience – like in some kind of pure or formless state.

Yet, an awareness devoid of experience is an awareness that is not aware of anything. What gives it, then, its aware nature if it is, in fact, unaware? Awareness is programmed to constantly know; if for an instant it wouldn't be aware of anything, it would become unconscious and therefore non-existent. Every particle or phenomenon is programmed to know, to seek its environment and interact. This constant movement of knowingness is the pulse of existence, a natural movement forward, the spontaneous pacing of creation, the very flow of time. This is what experience is at its most fundamental level – pure spontaneity or responsiveness .

What this means is that there is experience happening at every level of existence. Of course, not all types of experience are complex and self-aware like those of a human mind or even animals. But consciousness cannot ever be without content or information, otherwise it would drop into a state of nothingness, out of which nothing could arise again. Besides, we would find the absurd situation of something – manifest consciousness – turning into nothing – contentless consciousness. So experience is the name we give to the natural movement of existence – the primordial and inevitable interaction of emptiness and consciousness.

Awareness and experience are, therefore, never dividable. What this means is that, even in the most subtle and “inert” states of consciousness – what is usually called matter –, some type of experience is taking place. Awareness never dissolves into nothingness or oblivion, because experience, which is what constitutes it and gives it its “shape and color”, is never absent either. There is always knowingness going on.