spira - something, nothing, everything

I Am Something, Nothing, Everything

We go from thinking and feeling ‘I am something’ (that is, ‘I am a body, mind’) and when we explore what we are, we realize ‘No, I am the Awareness or the Aware Presence which Knows the body and the mind’.

In other words, I am not a ‘thing’ (a body and a mind). I am that which Knows that thing. But I myself am not made out of a thing, not made out of a body or a mind. In other words, I am not a thing. I am no-thing (nothing). Yes? So, we go from thinking and feeling ‘I am something’ to realizing ‘I am not a thing; I am nothing. I am just this open, aware Presence’.

Then, when we explore, this nothing, this no-thing-ness that I am, and find out what we, this Presence, really know about our Self, we discover that we don’t have limits, and that we are ever-present.

So, the discovery is that we are unlimited (or infinite, not-finite) …, not made out of something perceivable that has a limit: the infinite, not-finite, unlimited nature of Awareness. We discover that ‘I am ever-present; I am not in time, I am eternally now’. So, Awareness realizes its infinite and eternal nature.

From the point of view of a mind, which believes in the reality of things, it is said to be nothing: I am not a thing.

In fact, Awareness is not nothing. It is Presence and Awareness: that’s quite a lot.

But from the point of view of a mind that only knows things, it is said that what I am is no-thing. So, as a concession to the mind that believes in the reality of things, let’s say that, provisionally, what I am is nothing…, not a thing.

Now, the next stage. When we re-visit our experience of apparent-things (that is, of the mind, the body and the world) from this new perspective in which we have discovered that we are not a thing, and ask ourselves: ‘What is Awareness’ relationship with these apparent things now? (the apparent objects of the mind, the body and the world)’

As we look into them, we find that Awareness is not just the witnessing Presence in the background knowing these apparent objects from a distance, but it is in fact the very substance of these apparent things.

All we know of the world is the perceiving of it.
We don’t actually know a world, we just know perception.
And how close is perception to the one who knows it?

Ask yourself now:
All you know of this room is the seeing of it, yes?
All you know is the experience of seeing.
(Hearing, tasting, smelling, sensing and thinking makes up all experiencing)

In fact, you don’t know a room as it is normally conceived. When I say ‘as it is normally conceived’ I mean ‘as it is normally conceived as a separate, independent object made out of matter’. We don’t experience such a room; we just experience the experience of seeing.

Now, how close is seeing to yourself?

And when I say ‘yourself’ I mean the one that knows it; the one that is aware of it.

How close are these two?
The experience of seeing, and the one that knows it?

Q: They’re inseparable.

R: They’re not even inseparable, they’re closer than inseparable. There aren’t two things there in the first place, yes? It’s the same experience. But you’re right, they’re inseparable. They are not two things: Advaita; there are not two things there.

So, this we express by saying ‘I, this no-thing-ness, am the substance of all seeming-things’.

So, here we’ve moved from the position ‘I am not a thing; I am just this empty Awareness’
to realizing ‘I am the substance; not just the knower of all seeming-things, not just the witnessing consciousness in the background, but the actual substance of all seeming-things’.

So, we’ve gone from a position of ‘I am something’ to ‘I am nothing’
and from ‘I am nothing’ to ‘I am everything’. Yes?

So now, in each of these positions, we’re presuming the existence of things. Each statement makes reference to a ‘thing’. In the first position ‘I am something’. In the next position ‘I am not a thing’. In the third position ‘I am all things’.

But now, where are these ‘things’ that we are referring to? We’ve already seen that we never experience ‘a thing’ as such. Yes? And yet, we’re making a statement about ourself based on the presumption that ‘things are real’. (Presuming):
First of all ‘I am one of those things’.
Then ‘I am none of those things’.
And then ‘I am all of those things’.

But where are these ‘things’ that we are referring to?

So, even ‘I am everything’ is not true. It’s truer than ‘I am nothing’ and in turn, ‘I am nothing’ is truer than ‘I am something’. So, each statement is truer than the previous one. It gets closer, each statement comes closer, to the truth of our experience; and as such, is valid. But even the statement ‘I am everything’ is not true. So then, we drop the ‘all things’ because we don’t experience ‘things’.

Awareness doesn’t experience ‘things’. It just experiences Knowing.
(not the knowing OF things, but just Knowing.)

Awareness just experiences Awareness.

I Am.
Hence, the ‘every-thing’ falls off, and we’re left with ‘I Am’.

And then this ‘I Am’…, The statement ‘I Am’ is a statement: ‘I am present’.

But even here, there is a subtle suggestion in the statement ‘I am present’
that there is something called ‘not present’, ‘not Being’.
I’m making reference to myself as ‘I am Presence’ in contrast to something else that is ‘not’.

But there is no such thing as ‘not being’.
There is nothing that is ‘not present’.

Even the idea of Presence or Being is made in subtle reference to a belief that we have that there is something that disappears, something that was real and has now vanished. But it’s not true. That is never experienced. So then, the ‘am’ vanishes. And we’re just left with ‘I’.

But even ‘I’… what does ‘I’ mean without a reference to something that might not be ‘I’?
It doesn’t mean anything. It’s an abstract sound. It means nothing.

Even the ‘I’ refers to ‘something’ which is different from the ‘not-I’.

So then, here, the mind falls silent.
It cannot describe the nature of reality.
It just doesn’t have the language. It’s not the right tool.
~ ~ ~
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