the nature of consciousness - spira

The Essence of Meditation
from ‘The Nature of Consciousness’ by Rupert Spira.

The knowledge 'I am' is the mind's access to the absolute knowledge which lies behind, and is the ultimate reality of, all of its relative knowledge and experience. It is to this quest that Tennyson refers when he speaks of 'yearning in desire to follow knowledge like a sinking star, beyond the utmost bound of human thought'.

The turning of the mind towards its source of pure awareness may be effected by asking a question such as, 'Am I aware?' or 'Who am I?' In order to find the answer to these questions, the mind must look for the experience of simply being aware. As such, the question 'Am I aware?' or 'Who am I?' invites the mind — 'like a sinking star' — away from its customary objects of knowledge and experience — 'the bounds of human thought' — and draws it inwards towards its subjective source, the transparent, luminous, non-objective experience of being aware or pure awareness itself.

However, the mind does not have to go somewhere or indeed do anything to effect this dissolution of itself. There is no distance between mind and awareness, just as there is no distance between the character in the movie and the screen. The character in the movie is only an entity in her own right from her own limited and ultimately illusoly perspective. From the perspective of the self-aware screen, the only entity in existence is itself. Likewise, mind is only an independently existing entity from its own limited point of view.

In reality, there is no such thing as 'a mind'. What is normally considered the mind is a temporary, self-assumed limitation and localisation of the indivisible field of infinite awareness itself. From the perspective of awareness, there is only itself and its modifications in the form of mind, but never the absence of itself, nor the presence of any other, independently existing entity. It is for this reason that in the ü•ue nondual teaching, emphasis is placed on recognising the nature of reality rather than on dealing with or trying to get rid of a separate self and its attendant suffering.

So the suggestion to turn around or investigate one's true nature is made as a concession to the mind which feels that it is at a distance from and other than its source of pure awareness. For a mind accustomed to directing the light of its knowing towards objects, the suggestion to turn its knowing upon itself will initially seem to require an effort, just as one who is accustomed to clenching their fist for some time will seem to have to make an effort to open it. Only later will it become apparent that the opening of the fist was not a new effort, but rather the relaxation of a previous effort that had become so habitual that it was no longer noticed as such. In the same way, only later will it be noticed that to be knowingly the presence of awareness is our natural condition — that is, it is awareness's natural condition — and we cannot therefore make any effort to be it. All effort would take us away. In fact, all activities of mind require a more or less subtle effort, an activity of thought or perception. The limited awareness known as mind, and the apparent separate self or 
ego upon whom it is predicated, is an activity rather than an entity. Meditation is what we are, not we do; the separate self is what we do, not what we are.

In almost all cases the mind does not dissolve in its source immediately, it is a gradual process in which mind directs itself towards the knowing uith which it knows its knowledge and experience and, in doing so, sinks more and more deeply into the experience of simply being aware or awareness itself. As Rumi said, 'Flow down and down and down, in ever widening rings of being.'

As the mind flows down and down, sinking progressively deeper into its own essence — the experience of simply being aware or awareness itself — it is gradually divested of its colouring or conditioning and, in doing so, becomes increasingly transparent and luminous. Pure awareness itself is completely transparent; it has no form, colour or objective qualities and is, as such, without limitation. Pure awareness — the essential, irreducible nature of mind — is, in its own experience of itself, thus eternal and infinite.

As the finite mind sinks into its infinite essence it gradually loses its colouring or conditioning, like an image fading on a screen, and as it does so it loses its limitations. In the non-process of meditation, the mind, as Rumi suggests, becomes progressively 'wider' until it is divested of all its limits and stands revealed as luminous, empty awareness itself, the original, naked, unborn, irreducible and essential condition of the mind, or, in religious language, God's infinite being.

The more interested the mind becomes in its own essential nature of pure, objectless awareness, the more deeply it is drawn into it, and in time this interest grows into an intense love. Nothing could be more interesting or lovable than to know the nature of that through which all things are known. In fact, the mind cannot know what anything truly is until it knows the nature of the knowing with which it knows its knowledge and experience, that is, until it knows the nature of itself.