The Observer You Constructed
El observador que construiste
A student explores what remains when both "reality" and "I" are removed, leading to a discussion about the constructed observer, the collapse of subject and object, and the choice between identifying as a part of experience or as something unknowable.
The Observer You Constructed
A student explores what remains when both "reality" and "I" are removed, leading to a discussion about the constructed observer, the collapse of subject and object, and the choice between identifying as a part of experience or as something unknowable.
I feel that last question is powerful: "Who are you without reality and I?" It has a certain quality. Recently I've been looking in meditation at the observer, but I realized I even constructed an observer with whom I identify. When I try to answer that question, what comes is: there is nothing left. Nothing to notice. But it doesn't feel terrifying. It feels relieving.
That sounds great to me. It's very common to construct an observer. In a sense, you could think of it as steps.
The constructed observer as a step
Usually we are identifying with a bunch of objects of the mind, including the images of the body. Then, doing this work, you can start to see that there's something aware of the thoughts, something aware of the body. In a sense, you construct a subtle thought that is "the one that is aware of the others." It is a circular identity, but it does represent a kind of integration. You are no longer scattered and identified with things that are coming and going and changing, which is very distressful.
When you identify with the observer, it is one step closer to reality, because that thought has qualities more similar to reality. It's something you can tell is always present, and it doesn't depend on the kinds of thoughts or experiences you're having. But it's still a subtle object. It's still an idea, a thought.
Subject and object collapsing
The way you can work with that is to contemplate specific perceptions. For example, sound. Look at the tendency to conceive of it, to have a map that interprets the sound as an object with the observer as the subject. You hear a sound, and then you construct the sense of a self, a subject, an observer perceiving it. That's the subject-object relationship.
But if you contemplate the sound really closely, there is only a sound. The sound is what it is, and it is total. There is only the sound. The same with something you're looking at: there is only the seeing. There isn't the seer and the seen.
We tend to see something and then project it "out there," and we construct the receiver "in here." We hear something, project it out there, and internally construct sensations and thoughts to relocate it. We create a location, which creates a corresponding location that is receiving and perceiving it: the subject, the observer.
But if you contemplate very intimately the experience of, for example, a candle flame, or anything you can contemplate steadily, you'll see that the sound is just sounding. Language breaks a bit when you try to point to something more truthful. The sound is just appearing, and what the sound is, is you, in a sense. But there is no "you and the sound." And yet there is also something that is you without the sound. There is you without the sound, then you sounding, then you return to not being sound. It's like that with everything.
The infinite ocean
That's still a map, but it helps to point to infinite spaciousness. An infinite ocean where the substance of everything is made out of water, and that water takes certain kinds of movements and organizes into certain patterns of movement. If there is nothing that's not water, and the infinite space is of that same substance, then any individual object ceases to be. In that metaphor, what you are is that water. You are the infinite ocean, and it arranges in a way that creates the sense of a perspective, and it can arrange in ways that create multiple perspectives. But it's all water.
The practice
The practice I would suggest is to look at a perception that occurs regularly. You can look at the breath. You can look at thoughts. Focus on the inquiry: is there a subject and an object here, or is there just an object without a subject, or just a subject in the form of an object, moving in a way that appears as object? Language can only point to this, but you can intuitively start to sense it. Even when it seems like that couldn't be its reality, keep contemplating. Hold the open question: is it possible that there isn't, in fact, a perceiver and a perceived?
Those earlier pointers, "you're the observer, you're the perceiver," are tools for when there is total collapse, total identification. They are a good first step. But at some point that will end in identification with a subtle object, which is a perceiver.
It's basically realizing that you are awareness, and awareness behaves in a way that produces appearances, forms. Then realizing that awareness is infinite, and everything that exists is made of the same substance.
Working with discomfort
Whenever you have any thought you don't like, any sensation you don't like, any discomfort, any mood, you can use that experience to inquire in the same way. Use the hypothesis that nothing needs to change, and see what happens. Nothing needs to stop. Nothing needs to start. Nothing needs to appear that isn't here. Nothing of what's here needs to leave. The hypothesis is: what you're looking for is already here, even in the experience you're having right now, no matter what it is.
When there's something we don't like, we tend to create an object, a "me," around that. "I am the one that's resisting this," or "I'm the one that doesn't like this." There are many ways to see this. One way is to think of it as a level of consciousness where we choose to live. A level where we play a game in which we believe ourselves to be a part of the experience, pushing and pulling on another part of the experience. We create an avatar, a world, an external reality. We constantly create the "me" and the "world."
The game that requires a problem
You need a problem in order to sustain this. There needs to be a fundamental sense that something is not okay as it is. That's the only way you can live at that level of consciousness, which is a level we can choose to live at. It's fun in a way. There's suffering, but there's an aspect that is enjoyable. What happens is we can get tired of it, and the suffering begins to outweigh the fun. That's when we want to shift.
The shift is basically to stop believing that there is a fundamental split between reality and "I." You can still play that game, but it's going to look and feel very different. It really does come down to a choice, but it's a deep choice. I take that position strongly: it is a choice. If you're tired of that game, if you're struggling and you want it to be different, I always tend to bring the question: why are you wanting it to stay the same? What's the hidden agenda?
We can really create our experience. There's a lot of freedom in that, because a lot of it is interpretation. If we're living something we don't like, there's always a reason why, and it's subtle, because it doesn't have to do with what's happening in the external world.
Being the universe and a part of it
In a sense, it's like becoming natural, where you are the universe but also a part of it, living its natural process. There isn't a struggle with that. Whereas if you only live as that which is living a process, it can be very much at odds, fighting and unhappy, trying to change reality so that its experience is better.
If you, as consciousness, choose to identify only with a part of itself, it will be fighting other parts. That's the nature of that level of experiencing, and it's intentional. Another position is to choose to be infinite awareness and, from that knowing, live out life through the perspective of a part of itself.
I'm being very careful how I describe this, because it's words and it's subtle, but it's a really fundamental difference. You can be something unknowable, infinite, that is having a perspective. Or you can be only the perspective. The position of being only the perspective is going to, by the nature of that identification, have a lot of struggle. The position of being something unknown having a perspective is a very different reality.
Lucid dreaming as metaphor
These aren't just two positions on a map. They are experiential. It's literally like having a dream and waking up from the dream, except the qualities of the dream are the same. It's almost like having a dream and then lucid dreaming, where you're still in the dream, it looks the same, but you know you aren't the person in the dream. It's dreaming while being fully, one hundred percent aware that you're asleep and dreaming, while remaining fully in the dream world. It can happen.
Can you live the second way before having the complete shift in identity?
It's like saying, "Can you cross a road before you cross the road?" It's the same thing. The tricky part is constructing a thing that is an event in the future, a shift in identity. That is really tricky, because the part of you that wants to stay identified is going to tell itself the story that it's wanting to wake up. It's going to construct that as a way forward ("I'm going to wake up doing this"), which is actually staying in the dream. It reinforces the identity.
You just said, "How can you cross the road before you've crossed the road?" and now you're saying something else. It always comes back to the same paradox. I understand that there is no future, that it's only in the mind, and I understand the fact that what I identify as is just a dream. But the dream is happening, and that's where I get confused.
Measuring the position you live from
It is paradoxical. Another way to say it: right now, with everything that is happening, everything you're experiencing, nothing changes. Every thought, every experience you're having right now. Do you believe that what you are is an aspect or a part of your experience, or that what you are is unknown?
At any instant, what is the answer to that question? We live most of the time, if you were to take a kind of measurement across fifteen hours of a day, checking every minute: am I believing that I'm a part of my experience, or am I living as if I am something unknowable? It's a bit of a spectrum, too: more identified or less so. At any minute you take a measurement, and at the end of the day you look at the results.