Nancy: I had an experience two years ago of the sense of I disappearing and the deep recognition (cellularly) of Who I Am. It lasted 18 hours, and this Knowing, or what I call Awareness, illuminated that the sense of me-Nancy, the stories, and memories of me was just claiming ownership of what happens in each divine, unfolding moment. In actuality, life happens spontaneously and I, Nancy, am just a witness of It all. This knowing has been the greatest gift! Thank you, Robert, for being a wayshower!
Robert: You are most welcome, Nancy, but If I am a kind of “wayshower,” then the root of that “way” is skepticism first and foremost.
Yes, you had the kensho, and that’s beautiful. I have had that kind of shake ’em up, wake ’em up myself that I now view as akin to snapping out of a trance that one has been lost in for years. And I understand the point of view of feeling like a witness. But, as my old mentor, Walter Chappell, once said to me, “No, Robert. That’s not it.”
If I am showing any “way,” the witness is not the way I would like to show. That so-called witness is a phantom of what I call splitting, which takes something seamless—something indivisible—and divides it in two, like an ugly barbwire fence right down the middle of a green meadow. In this case, the utter mystery of be-ing is split in two: “All that is just arising” and I--over here--am just watching it.” Nope. That’s not it. Not by my lights.
There is the story of the spiritual aspirant who is walking with his teacher, proudly describing his new realization. “Yes,” he tells the teacher. “Suddenly, it was clear to me that this life of mine is just a dream, and no one actually exists at all. All that actually exists is Source, Oneness, The Absolute. Whatever we see, feel, or think is only an illusion. Now that I grasp this, I can observe illusions as they arise and avoid getting lost in them. Etcetera, etcetera, etcetera, blah, di-blah, di-blah."
Finally, the teacher can stand no more of this palaver. He takes the student by the shoulders and kicks him hard in the shin.
“Ow, ow, ow,” cries the student. “Why did you do that?”
“How’s that for an illusion?” replies the teacher.
My studies with Walter had an element of that dance. I always wanted to arrive, to become, to know, to really “get it.” But he would never let me. “That’s not it, Robert,” he said like a kick in the shin. I still recall his tone of voice.
Not that Walter would ever tell me what “it” was. Thank God for a real friend like that in life. So many self-described teachers want precisely to tell you what “it” is. I can hear them now in a cacophony of claims:
“The brain cannot be the source of consciousness because the brain is just an object in Consciousness.”
“Nothing that changes really exists.”
”When you see the dream as a dream, you are awake.”
“Nothing was ever born, and nothing ever dies.”
“Only the ‘Absolute’ is real. I am just a dream in Brahman's mind.”
“Etcetera, etcetera, blah, di-blah, di-blah."
Nope. That’s not it. Spirit versus matter, levels, hierarchies, and all that jazz is not it. This is not to discount your new understanding, Nancy, which is beautiful as far as it goes. But walk on, I say. Don’t get stuck in an idea--any idea. Don’t get stuck in memories of an experience—any experience.
Awakening never ends, and final explanations are features of a hypnotic trance.
“It,” I say, defies being grasped for even the briefest moment. Perhaps with great luck, the vastness, the inexplicability might be noticed at all—to an extent at least. Comprehended? Grasped? Not for a scintilla of an iota of an instant. “It” just runs through your fingers like water through a sieve. Described? Explained? Don’t make me laugh.
So the way I would like to show is this:
Reject all identities. Let “the observer” die a natural death. The observer may seem to be an improvement on plain old ego, but it’s cut from the very same cloth. No one knows what “myself” really is. Our moment-by-moment actual human experience—perceptions, feelings, and thoughts—is all we have to go on. The standard dogmatic metaphysics is thoughts, not “Truth.”
Teachers and “jnanis” are not gods, after all, immune from human ignorance. They have no access to the ultimate truth, any more than you and I do.
Splitting creates distinctions where there are none.
This looks like a great post and I will read it as I do all of them, however I could not get past the first sentence without wanting to convey something that helped me more than can be described - far more than any other experience ever did, and as much as any teaching instruction.
There are exquisite experiences where the "I sense" goes away. They are genuinely beautiful, and one could comment not untruthfully that they are "more true to what is" than when the "I sense" is present.
However, THAT is not IT. This is! Meaning, whatever you are experiencing right now, *you* are whole and complete. There isn't anything missing, nor is it possible for there to be. If we contemplate (when our mind is calm ideally, unburdened by wants, needs, or clocks) about how it would be possible for anything to be missing from this whole and complete "is-ness," it's not too difficult to glimpse that it isn't.
"Holding" that glimpse is neither easy nor necessary, any more than it's necessary to learn more than once not to touch a hot stove. It may take a little time to gain full confidence in that insight, but so what, it's well worth it. Giving up just because there is a doubt is the same as wanting to learn the art of playing piano and giving up after one day of practice because you haven't achieved that.
The idea that the "I sense" needs to be gone in order to be "awake" (as Robert describes it) is completely false. Forget for now about its origins, there are many factors, but it is just plain wrong. The presence or absence of an "I sense" or I thought" is not the point, the point is simply to see that the person represented by the "I sense" is illusory in nature.
Not "an illusion," but illusory, meaning having no substance. how can we call the entirety of the experience of what we are while we are "here" an illusion? Only through a form of insanity called "the normal way of thinking." Calling life an illusion means missing out on the majesty of it, which is only found in the experience of it exactly as it is.
Some people talk about the "I sense" disappearing and not coming back, and maybe that happens. Why not? However, the "I sense" is as good as disappeared when you know that IT is not you, because then it is no different than a cloud which you would obviously not think shouldn't be there.
I was just thinking about this very same thing this morning. I've heard so many teachers explain that "I" am the aware witness. That leaves me feeling very divided and separate from my experiences. I understand that experiences come and go but unless I'm sleeping, I feel like I can't NOT experience...