"When we “look out” through our senses, we are in fact looking into a small world of appearances. When we look inwards (in meditation) we are in fact looking out into the infinite field of being?
These numbered posts are companion pieces to my weekly meditation and self inquiry classes and are written as a natural continuous unfolding of the topic The Eternal Path.
Read post nr 1,2,3,4,5,6 ,7,8,9 &10 first to allow the topic of, Walking The Path, to unfold.
Does the world manifest material complexity outwards, resulting in subtler layers of existence? Does it start from insentient matter which then becomes biological life that develops into sophisticated beings with specific senses, ego and finally this consciousness now reading these words while thinking I am reading? This sequence of unfolding is what we are told is true. But have you investigated it?
Seen as concentric circles, each more aware and subtle than the previous, each containing the lower levels of manifestation, we can picture it like this.
If so, then how come we have the exact opposite experience? Of existing at the centre. Of being personal consciousness existing alone as the centre of all sensory experiences of the world, mind, and emotions?
Let’s make a thought experiment. Imagine that the world grows inwards instead. Inwards in a field of pure potential. Like water freeze inwards when subjected to external cold. Like ice cubes form. Maybe the world begins with pure energy/ infinite consciousness which experience a simple wave of change (like cold for the water). Cold does not remove water, it just changes the molecular grid structure of water, we now call it ice, but it is still H2O (which, like all matter, is nothing but 99,9% emptiness and 0,1 % vibration of that emptiness). This illusion, that a part of water is no longer water, is nothing but a sensory perception, which gives rise to the words: water, ice, snow, etc. Now, if we imagine the beginning of everything as a clear expanse of infinite water. In it, a change, a primordial delineation appears to happen. A line of difference emerges. We perceive of it as real, just as we see ice as different from water. This first wave of apparent change is the non-biological sense of otherness. In humans we call the sense of otherness for ego.
Does reality then manifest inwards from the line of sense of otherness (ego) and splits up into smaller and smaller concentric circles of mind, intellect, senses and finally the dense realm of body-matter?
Imagine this: First was even, unbroken, eternal, and infinite oneness. Ego, or the sense of otherness, appeared as the imaginary line dividing oneness into two: water and ice, ocean and wave, observer and observed, object and subject, infinite consciousness and limited consciousness, oneness and duality. Infinite consciousness now looks inwards through the limiting eyes (filter) of ego and sees how ego perceives the world of its own projection (amplification of filtered vision).
This world of ego, due to ego perceiving its own nature as partial existence cut off from the whole, feels empty, separate, and isolated.
Ego, being conscious of its sorry state and wanting to figure out what is going on, then subdivides itself. It erects a second filter to amplify its vague sense of a movement “out there”. It calls the new partition of itself for mind. Mind is the tool (filter) for perceiving and imagining how this confusing happening of divisions will behave, this spectre of separation. You can observe this pattern in the evolution of life and in your own development from foetus to adult.
The mind sees a pattern of flowing difference and change, but cannot make sense of it, so a sharper more specific tool is needed. The mind splits one small part of itself off; it appoints the agency of intellect. The intellect is the tool (filter) for amplifying the fuzzy impressions of the mind. Dividing, analysing, sorting, categorizing, and perceiving difference is the task of the intellect. We think we are pulling the world into focus, but we are actually amplifying vague signals of movement and difference that are nothing but the belief that “ice is not water”. Our search results in finding what we amplify.
Because the intellect sees only nonspecific change and differences, the special senses are added to provide stronger antennas to pick up specific information about these appearances of difference. Each sense focus on a limited wavelength of the full spectrum. Nerves relays those specific signals as electric signals to the brain, where the intellect, which picks up the signals and, according to its capacity and prejudice, creates a story of objects and space, of time and distance, a sequence of events; cause and effect. The mind excitedly observes this clearer show of change and adds value, limitations, meaning, emotions, thoughts, and names.
The ego, ignorant of existing as a ripple in unchanging and infinite consciousness, only able to look inwards, seeing only the limited show of objects and change, says: these impressions all come to ME, so I must be at the centre of the world looking out at it. To the ego the world looks like this.
Whereas the ego is in fact an optical lens/ filter of perception defining the circumference of the world, through which infinite consciousness is looking into concentric and diminishing spheres, providing a narrowing perspective and the impressions of denser reality.
The sense of otherness, projected inwards through this set of concentric modes of increasingly coarse filtering and enhancing of grossness, is the world of things, time, space. It is our specific way of ego based perception that creates the appearance of the world we perceive.
The problem, as proven by quantum physics, is that the intention of the observer changes the observed, so we find what we intend to look for.
Perception is deception. The world is upside down, inside out.
When we “look out” through our senses, we are in fact looking into a small world of appearances. When we look inwards (in meditation) we are in fact looking out into the infinite field of still consciousness. Meditation is internal research which has the power to change the understanding of our angle of perception by realising our true position.
We as humans exist in a unique position right on the threshold between spirit and matter. We are standing in the doorway and have the power of choice. We have the gift of being able to turn both ways, into the small time-limited, unstable, unpredictable, and diminutive world of matter, as well as towards the eternal consciousness, which is in fact the consciousness reading these words in this moment
The physical world sits in the centre of an inwards increasingly denser set of spheres of appearances which rise as waves in the ocean of infinite consciousness. This ocean is our true nature. The wave is the illusion of difference.
Why don’t we see this?
Well we do have the latent ability to see it, but we must change our direction of looking to understand.
When consciousness has searched for long enough, through the distorting ego lens and using the tools of mind, intellect, sense, and matter, without finding lasting knowledge and peace, it gets disillusioned and begins to look around for answers. It moves, turns, investigates, and inquires into the search for happiness, the reality of the world, as well as into its own nature. Disillusion is the first step of awakening.
In its dissatisfaction, consciousness turns and twists, and while delving deeply into the nature of manifestation, it realizes the illusory nature of the separating line of otherness (ego). Consciousness could now simply turn around, look out and merge with oneness. We do all catch glimpses of that vast space of peace now and then, but to just turn and not revert to the habit of identification with the limited perception through the glasses of otherness, is not always so simple. Due to its attachment to the ego, consciousness keeps looking inwards.
But there is another way: inquiry into the nature of the manifest reality.
While practising its ability of observation and inquiry, consciousness first deliberately crosses over the lines of illusory separation, this time inwards, towards matter. It keeps going inwards without concluding that it knows anything. Finally, consciousness sees that at the centre of all the circles, inside matter, is also a subtle sense of “me”, of ego. Like this, consciousness, due to its attachment to ego, finds itself hidden as a subtle non-human “ego” (sense of otherness) in the centre of matter. It sees a reflection of itself. Upon inspection, the reflected ego also turns out to be just an idea, emptiness, nothingness. The ice is simply water. Water is simply emptiness. Looking at this “nothingness” unflinchingly, consciousness sees that this “nothingness- formerly-known-as-ego” is in fact all-permeating unbound consciousness and realizes that it was blinded by the sense of otherness, the illusion of ego. Limited consciousness recognises itself as universal consciousness. The wave realizes it is the ocean. It sees how truth has been all-permeating and obvious all the way through the inspection of the infinite layers of manifestation.
“Why did I not see this when I first encountered my ego, before this long and disappointing journey of searching for true happiness in an illusory world?” says consciousness and replies to itself, “ Because you were so intoxicated by finally being a conscious being with the possibility of clarity.”
Paradoxically you have come home to the centre of oneness and simultaneously stepped outside the narrow spheres of difference. You vanish as ego by merging with the absolute. Inside and outside has become one. The primordial line of separation was an illusion.
The loop of deceptive perception is closed through free observation. Consciousness is freed from ego identification and achieves the vision of oneness and realize that it has seen everything upside down, inside out. The inner pool of clear consciousness that you perceive as “I” is in fact also the surrounding infinite ocean of pure being.
So, what happened?
Confused by feeling separate, consciousness sent you, the ego, looking for answers, a search which has manifested the entire field of the illusory world, because understanding that “world” was the goal and wish of the searching ego. Ego (the illusory sense of separation, incompleteness) needed desperately to identify with something to fulfil its painful and true sense of non-existence. Ego found exactly what it was looking for because the tools of investigation were manufactured by the wish to look for something specific and limited to become.
Now, with the tool of unidentified self-inquiry and meditation, you realise that this entire world is just consciousness looking inwards, into a small bobble of illusions caused by the contracted ego’s desire to know what difference and what oneness is, to ultimately know itself as free unlimited consciousness.
This world is the illusory ability of universal consciousness to identify with an imagined part of itself. The first part to be imagined is the ego, the sense of otherness.
Why were we lost for so long?
We began our journey by looking “out” only seeing differences, similarity, and change, and when you, as ego, look “out” you are pulled into the narrow whirlpool of the world. We keep looking until we understand that our vision of ourselves and the world we investigate, is an illusion made by identification with the tools we employ, with our antennas and software.
When we let go of our identification with ego, we finally know ourselves as the pure awareness, which already knows itself as universal consciousness observing the faint ripples inside the bobble of illusory manifestation drifting in the ocean of pure infinite space that we were and still are.
