David Hall's Non-Duality Blog
My name's David Hall. I'm the creator of this web site and its content. I live in Wales in the UK.
I developed the Celtic design software KnotWorker, I create electronic music as Goldcup7, and I've written books on spirituality and non duality.
Hope you enjoy this Non Duality blog. New blogs are added on Tuesdays and Fridays.
Please use the Contact page if you have any questions or would like me to discuss a topic.
- Category: Non-duality
- Hits: 486
Following from Shakespeare's famous quote from Hamlet, "To be or not to be, that is the question," let's consider what it means to be, to exist, to be alive, and whether we can ever not be. Being is the core of our nature. I say 'the core' because that helps us to understand it better, but truly it is the whole of our nature. It is what we are, but it seems that it is at the heart of who we are. The reason for this is that Being becomes clothed with identity.
That needs some explanation. Say we start off as just Being. Our primordial self is Pure Being. We are just what is, without any objective qualities. Without form. Without beginning or end. Imagine then that from Being, or as it's sometimes termed, Isness, there developed the sense 'I'. This 'I' is linked with Being, so the sense 'I am' appears. Next the 'I am' sense reaches out and attaches to form. To cut a long story short, we reach the point where we identify with dense forms, such as the human body, and we feel that I am a man or I am a mother, or I am a doctor, or I am an insecure office worker and I have lots of problems in my life. This is the human experience of identity and how it can tangle us up into all sorts of problems, beliefs and associations. The identity develops and attaches to the things of the world. However, the source of Beingness is always here. Underneath the clothing of human identity and association is the pure naked Beingness that is our true nature.
Our Beingness is never lost. It only seems to be hidden because of the focus of attention away from our being to the changing forms of the world. Our being is unchanging and imperceivable. It is imperceivable in the same way that we cannot see our eyes. We may look at them in a mirror, but that is only a reflection of where we are looking from. Our being is self aware. We are self aware. But we cannot see our formless nature. Instead the world appears as a reflection of our formless nature. The unchanging stillness of our being perceives the changing world of motion.
Is it possible to not be? Well, Being is what we are. It is formless and boundless, so it is a shared Being. We are the same Being, the Infinite One Being. So we cannot not be. But there is a sense of our nature being emptiness, a full emptiness, a complete emptiness. Our Being can be called Nothingness, because it has no objective qualities. Yet we can understand its 'qualities' through the reflection of the world. You see, the world is a play of opposites that reflects the singular nature of Being. Where we experience love and hate in the world it reflects our true nature of Pure Love. Where we experience gain and loss in the world it reflects our true nature of Content Completeness. Where we experience alive and not alive in the world it reflects our true nature of Pure Unending Life.
What this means is that although our nature can be described as Nothingness, where it could be said that we do not exist, what we know as the highest qualities in the world point to the unmanifest nature of our being. We are Pure Love, Pure Life, Pure Clarity, Pure Consciousness, Pure Stillness, Pure Being. Yet this is imperceivable until the mirror of the world appears before us and reflects back aspects of our unmanifest nature. The world is always less than what we are, because we are complete in our unmanifest state. Call it Being or Not Being, Completeness or Emptiness, we are as we are.
- Category: The Human Experience
- Hits: 486
Is it possible to be aware of anything outside of consciousness? If we close our eyes and focus attention on the body we can sense where our feet are, where our hands are etc. There is a sense of vibration. There's not a clearly defined boundary of the body. It's a vague sense of vibration here and there.
Still with our eyes closed we can focus on sounds. Sound can also be understood as vibration we can sense. It is the same with all senses - they can be considered as the detection of vibration, change or fluctuation, at different levels that we can call frequencies. For example the sense of taste is the detection of subtle interaction between the taste buds and the food making contact.
All this sense perception happens within consciousness. If we close our eyes and focus on our feet we experience the subtle vibration that we think of as the feet. But let's take away the label of feet. Really there is the experience of a subtle vibration. This vibration is within consciousness. All sensations, and indeed our whole world experience, are vibrations or fluctuations within consciousness. Okay, so consciousness is another label. It is that in which and by which we know.
The pointer here is that what we consider as our body and the world outside is all a vibration or fluctuation within consciousness. Nothing is outside consciousness. It is consciousness that knows the body and world, and it is consciousness that the body and world appear within as vibrations of the one substance of consciousness.
The whirlpools, waves and currents of the ocean are all fluctuations of the ocean. It is the same with the world and consciousness. The world is a fluctuation within consciousness, and there is nothing other than or outside of consciousness.
It is this Consciousness that seems to be the heart of all experiences and all experiencers. It seems to be the heart of all conscious beings. It is One heart. Yet it is the whole. It seems to be the heart when we still hold a concept of inside and outside. But when this is dropped there is only What Is. It is this one Being that is known as Consciousness, God, the Self, Brahman, the Infinite One.
- Category: Spirituality
- Hits: 482
True Peace and Stillness has nothing to do with the body or the mind. The body and the mind vibrate and flow with energy. Trying to still the mind or body is impossible, like trying to still the turning of the planet. It's possible to slow or calm the mind and the body, but they will continue to flow.
In meditation we may still the body somewhat and settle the mind's agitation. But the True Peace and Stillness we seek is beyond the world of time and space. It is the core of our being, the core of Aware Being that perceives the movements of the world through the senses and through the mind.
So do not be concerned by the body or the mind's agitation. It is not you. Pure Peace and Stillness is the heart of your being. It is your unchangeable nature, within which the world of change is perceived. Let the world change, and be as you are.
- Category: Non-duality
- Hits: 484
If there is One Infinite Consciousness why can't we know other people's thoughts? Some people may find it difficult to accept that there is One Consciousness. We perceive a world of differences. There are many people with different beliefs, languages, cultures, ethnicities, fashions and interests. We all seem to have our own mind, think our own thoughts and make our own choices. How can I be the same consciousness as all those other people? I don't know their thoughts. Surely I would know all thoughts if I was the same consciousness.
Let's understand this better. I could say that in my mind I experience my thoughts, images and dreams. However, I'm already limiting my mind there. It would be more accurate to say that in my mind I experience thoughts, images, dreams, feelings, perceptions, the body and the world. It would be fair to say that all my experience is in my mind. I don't experience anything of the world outside my mind. Even my sense of inside my mind and outside my mind is actually all in my mind. The mind only seems to be inside the denser human form. So where does my mind end?
Truly we cannot find a limit to the mind. I can close my eyes and reach out indefinitely in the mind without finding a limit. Even the perception of the universe I experience in my mind when I look up at the sky on a clear night has no end. We will search forever trying to find true limits.
Is this mind then the same as Infinite Consciousness? Yes, but we call it the mind when it has a sense and belief of being limited and separate. It's not really 'my' mind, and really there is no mind. There is only Infinite Consciousness. But Infinite Consciousness cannot know a multitude. It cannot know many. The human experience allows Infinite Consciousness to seemingly focus and limit itself to perceive itself as a being in a world of many. Our dream experience is a smaller representation of this, where we experience our mind through the activities of a being in a dream world. The sense of limits in the dream world are weaker but it's not unusual to meet a character in the dream world and not know what they are thinking. Yet the dream is wholly the mind. In a dream my character, the other characters and the places I go to are all the mind.
This world that we experience then is wholly Infinite Consciousness appearing to be limited and separate. The apparently limited mind is like a mini Consciousness, with similar qualities. What happens in the mind is that thought forms develop a sense and belief of separation, limitation and identity. If we truly let go or dispel these false senses and beliefs of limitation, the mind sinks back into its true nature of Infinite Consciousness. This is what we call Nirvana, Moksha, Self Realisation, or Enlightenment.
This doesn't mean then that an Enlightened One can hear all thoughts or indeed know all things. The thoughts, the being and the world only appear by Consciousness focusing and condensing. When Self Realisation occurs it is a withdrawing of focus and a letting go of limits. As mentioned earlier, Infinite Consciousness cannot know the many. Although Infinite Consciousness is at the heart of all experiences, the experiences of the many beings belong in the apparently separate world, not in the Awareness of Pure Being. As far as Infinite Consciousness is concerned, there is not a world, there are not many people, nothing happens, and there is no space or time.
So it is not that Infinite Consciousness knows all things. Infinite Consciousness knows only itself. Although it is the essence of intelligence it does not know many things, because 'many things' is not the reality. Infinite Consciousness is the reality and the peak of knowing. It is the Pure Clarity of Being. It is our core nature, self knowing and knowing no other.
- Category: The Universe
- Hits: 482
Most people know of the Big Bang Theory, where the universe that we see now, this multiplicity, was once a singularity. It's postulated that the singularity exploded, creating the universe from the interaction of forces that created the elements that make up the matter of the universe. Planet Earth and all creatures are formed from the stuff of stars, and all can be traced back to the singularity. It has been observed that the universe continues to expand from the force of the Big Bang.
I'm certainly not going to say that this theory is completely wrong, although I would say that no theory is completely right. The reason that no theory can be completely right is that it is a theory, and a theory is an expression with words and concepts attempting to describe something that is not of words and concepts. The words and concepts are at best a step down from the reality of what the theory is attempting to describe. So I would say it should be accepted that no theory is perfect. There is a spectrum of accuracy, from near perfect to far from perfect. But the True Perfection is inexpressible.
So, as long as we accept theories as not being wholly true, they can still be very useful. Let's examine the Big Bang a little. It seems to make sense, and the evidence is there to show that there was outwards motion from a super event. If it is assumed that space and time appeared from the singularity, then it can be accepted that there was no 'before' the Big Bang, as the singularity was timeless. The splitting of the singularity created space and time. But we need to explore the nature of the singularity more.
We can imagine a singularity. There are no separate things. There is no space or distance. No past or future. No division or definition of form. Just one imperceivable substance that has no beginning or end. We know a singularity has no beginning or end because otherwise there would be something other than it by which it was limited, and then we're no longer talking about a singularity. We could even say that the substance of the singularity is no substance. We can imagine that the singularity contained the potential for the universe, the potential for when the Big Bang happened and the potential for all change that happens thereafter.
(It is perhaps for another article to consider how the seed of the singularity is scattered, and continues to scatter further seeds that develop from the potential stored in the seed. This, after all, is the pattern that nature on this planet continues to demonstrate.)
It's very difficult to imagine how this perfectly stable complete singularity split and exploded to become the multiplicity we see now. But there is a simple answer: the singularity did not split. An infinite singularity cannot be divided. At best it can only appear to be divided. This multiplicity that we see as the universe is the appearance of division within the singularity. Remember, the singularity is beyond time and space - it was before time began, it remains, and it will be as it is at the end of time. The singularity does not (and cannot) change.
You won't find the singularity here or there. It is beyond space. It has no dimension. The best we can say is that is just here and now. The singularity remains whilst the explosive expanding universe appears within its field of infinity. We can go a step further in understanding how this seems to happen. We can say that the universe that appears is like the stretching out of the singularity into a multiplicity. This stretching does not divide the singularity. It merely creates an illusory sense of distance and separation, whilst remaining undivided. Just as the rainbow appears as an undivided flow of colour variation from white light.
Opposing forces, balance, imbalance, and the interplay of opposites appear because the apparent multiplicity must total zero. That is, the singularity remains intact, so any force must have an equal but opposite force to counter the seeming imbalance. What goes out must come in. Where the universe expands it must contract, albeit across the span of time. It is the appearance of time and space that is the imbalance and rebalance of the universe.
There is a sense with the Big Bang Theory that there was a point where the Big Bang happened and the universe has expanded outwards from there. This may appear to be the case, but if one were to trace the origin of the universe one would arrive at the singularity. At the point of the singularity there would be no inside or outside. The singularity can only be considered from outside of it. But within the singularity there is no outside or inside. Hence the singularity remains 'everywhere' yet nowhere. It has no space, yet space appears within it.
Hopefully that helps to understand the nature of the Singularity a little. It's hugely important to humanity. We are not separate parts of the Singularity. There is only the Singularity appearing as a multiplicity. Not just the animals and humans, but in fact every 'thing'. There are no 'things' of course. There is only the Singularity.
From the human perspective the Singularity can be considered to be at the heart of our being. Consciousness is all that we know. All human experience is within Consciousness. The universe is only ever experienced within Consciousness. We can consider then that the Singularity is at the heart of our conscious being. It is that point in us that does not change. It is the very essence of life that produces the appearance of what is alive and what is not alive, whilst Pure Life remains throughout. We are that. There is only Pure Life. We are the Oneness of all that is. We are complete. It seems to be at the heart of our being, but when we find that core point there is no inside or outside. The illusory sense of division and separation will fall away. The clarity of the Infinite One will shine.