The Question at the Root of Illusion
La pregunta en la raíz de la ilusión
This meditation explores the question of whether awareness can exist without experience, inviting you to look beneath thought and perception toward what remains.
The Question at the Root of Illusion
The value of many words
I think there's value in some multiple words.
And I think there's value in something being spoken of in multiple ways.
Something might resonate for you now, today, or in this period in one way,
and then that might shift.
Actually, I didn't know it or call it peace till months after the shift happened.
And before that, I never contemplated peace.
I never contemplated knowing it.
In fact, after the shift happened, what I noticed I called silence
for many months,
till the word peace came to me as a better word, a better name.
Distinguishing the I am
What matters with the I am is
that you distinguish it from what is called the I am sense and the I am thought.
The I am thought is mind, is illusion.
The I am sense is still mind, is sensation and mind, is also illusion.
And then the I am is not; the I am is reality.
And the question you were saying you're contemplating,
which is: would this be there if there was no experience?
So you're looking for it, for example, in the sensation of the breath.
Those are valid.
These practices are very valuable because we're so attached, or identified.
What identification is
Identification really is a thought appearing,
and when the thought appears, we don't recognize it as a thought.
We recognize it as reality.
We assume the image to be reality.
That's identification.
Because in that image, there's going to be a subjectivity.
It's a mind construct.
The image of the mind appears and there's going to be a subjectivity.
There's going to be a sense of "I" within that world that is appearing in thought.
And identification is: this thought construct appears but is not seen as thought.
It is seen as reality. It's an assumption.
So that's identification.
Trickling back to what is present
But now, when you contemplate the I am and the breath,
or when observing mind,
it starts to create a little bit of a trickling back
into something that's present here prior to what is appearing.
It starts to reference
the reality that knows the appearance,
the reality that is knowing the sensation of the breath,
the reality that is knowing the appearance of the mind
or thought or sensation or whatever.
Now this might be understood or interpreted as: there are two things,
the appearances and the reality,
the perceiver and the perceived.
And we know that truth has been expressed as not two.
Neti neti
And that's why this is a good process,
to recognize the perceiver, or to know that
I cannot be what is appearing, because there is a knowing.
There's a very clear knowing
that I am not that which I'm perceiving, in a sense.
This is neti neti.
So if there's a hand,
there is a true, real sense that I am not this appearance.
This is not me. This is other, in a sense.
But this is still not Advaita.
This is still not non-duality.
Not two
What can be recognized is that the I am projects.
And so that's why it is spoken of, or described, as a dream.
So this which is appearing is also not not-I-am.
Otherwise it would have been called unity, in a sense.
Because "not two" is more accurate.
If we go towards unity, which is more of a Christian language,
it's leaving room for more.
If there's one, there must be zero or two,
or there's an implication there,
versus a negation, which is: it's not two.
So truth, in language,
can most accurately only be expressed as a negation.
Not two.
Or in the Tao Te Ching:
Tao called Tao, not Tao,
which is a more correct translation from Chinese.
In more colloquial translations it's:
the Tao that is spoken is not the true Tao.
The Tao that is named is not the true Tao.
So if I speak, if I label it, if I call it,
that's not truth.
But this is all pointing to I am.
The most important question
And the question you asked, which you're asking yourself,
is the most important question.
And it's not one for me to answer.
It's for you to let it take you as deep as it goes.
Can there be this I am without experience?
That goes at the root of all illusion
because it goes at this duality,
the sense of perceiver and perceived.
Can the perceived disappear and still there be perceiver?
If that happens, does perceiver make any sense?
If there is no perceived, what happens?
If the object disappears and the subjectivity still exists,
does subjectivity make any sense?
No.
Then what remains?
Because there's nothing else.
Exactly. And then what remains
is this.
No words.
What the words point to
And that's why the words for describing that are impersonal:
peace, consciousness, reality.
They're not timeless; they're prior to time.
They're not infinite; they're prior to space and dimensions.
It's before.
And it's valuable, and something happens just asking the question.
The question as contemplation
Like with any perception,
it doesn't need to even disappear, the perception or whatever the content.
But it can. It might.
But it matters, because it's like the question: who am I?
You don't ask it in order to come up with an answer.
It guides, it points to an openness and a looking,
not through the eyes, not through the mind,
in a very directed way towards the core of the illusion of duality.
So the question that you're referring to,
that I'd rather not put too much in my own words
because I think intuitively you're approaching it right:
just approach it as the contemplation.
When it slips into concept
I noticed this confusion,
that sometimes it's really obvious, and it's,
"Oh yeah, it's the most obvious thing: I am."
And then sometimes it turns more into a concept,
and suddenly I realize I'm connecting with a concept, an idea,
more than the actual thing.
As if there's a confusion or a back and forth there.
Well, I think what you're speaking of is when we get into thinking about it,
lost in the train of thought around the concepts.
That's normal.