The Human Experience
- Written by David Hall
- Category: The Human Experience
The Non-Duality understanding clearly explains the reason for humanity's dissatisfaction with life and search for happiness. Desire arises as a consequence of the sense and belief of being a separate individual in the world. This is not who we really are. Reality is an infinite, indivisible Singularity. This is our true nature, our true Being. So when the mind identifies as a limited separate being, it will inevitably feel incomplete. It will never be satisfied. There will always be something missing. It will never be content.
On a lower 'physical' level the human body is somewhat incomplete and needs sustenance from the environment. There is a human urge for union with another human, primarily for the purpose of procreation, but humanity has evolved beyond the need to just survive and procreate. The human mind has evolved. Desire has evolved in the mind, arising from the sense and belief of identifying as a separate individual. This apparently separate individual has wants and desires beyond the 'physical' needs of the body. The mind itself is seeking the peace of union. Reality is Oneness, so this sense of being separate brings with it the feeling of being incomplete, wanting without satisfaction, and ultimately suffering, not being content.
The mind that identifies as separate will initially look outwards for what it feels it wants and needs. It tries to find satisfaction in the world. People look for love, search for happiness, use substances to give some relief or escape from this yearning and unfulfilled desire. They occupy themselves with things to do, to keep the mind from falling into loneliness and yearning for something. This is an understandable search, but ultimately nothing lasts. This is where the mind turns to spirituality, and spiritual teachings that say to practise meditation to bring about peace.
The mind seeks to end its suffering, and after trying to find peace and happiness in the world, it turns inwards to find peace in itself. Meditation seeks to calm the mind. In calming the mind, a clarity is found, a peace and contentment. Without the mind's chatter, and ultimately without the mind's sense and belief of being a separate individual, there is no sufferer and no suffering. The body may encounter pain still, but there is only an experience of this without the mind's sense of suffering.
- Written by David Hall
- Category: The Human Experience
In Non-Duality teaching there is not a thinker or a doer. There is only Consciousness. Consciousness can't sing and dance, and it can't walk. But we seem to be able to move about. Let's understand this.
Consciousness is stillness beyond any sense of movement. Movement is the appearance of change within the unchanging Consciousness. We are not the body that seems to move about. So although you may say, "I'm going for a walk," it's not really you that goes walking. It's the body that walks, not Consciousness. The body and its movements are not who we are. We perceive the body and its movements. Most spiritually aware people could agree that they are not the body.
Then we have the mind. We might say, "I was thinking about what you said yesterday." But we don't do the thinking. The mind thinks, or rather thoughts appear in what we call 'the mind'. We are the Consciousness experiencing the mind, its thinking and thoughts. We perceive the thoughts appearing and the sense of identity in the mind that thinks it is thinking thoughts. We can't really define 'the mind'. It is what we call the field in which thinking, feeling, sensing and perceiving appears. Ultimately 'the mind' can be considered as a focusing of Consciousness.
It's important to remember that Consciousness is like a Singularity. It is dimensionless and formless. It doesn't go anywhere or do anything. There is nothing and nowhere other than Consciousness for it to be able to move or do anything. Consciousness is formless. If there is any form (including thought forms) or there is any movement, that's not you. That's not Consciousness. It appears in Consciousness, yes. But it is illusory in the sense that it is not a true portrayal of Consciousness. Consciousness cannot 'see' itself. So anything that is perceived cannot be it. Any appearance of forms will be imperfect compared to the Pure Perfection of Formless Consciousness.
So who thinks the thoughts? Nobody. The thoughts float by within Consciousness, as part of the mind and its conditioning. The mind forms a sense of identity, which is thought-based. This thought-based identity then thinks that it is thinking thoughts. It's all a flow of thought energy that reacts to the more dense forms of the body and the world. We can understand it like this: there is solid matter of the body that changes slowly, there is liquid matter in the body that moves around, there is gas also flowing through the body at a higher rate; then there is the less dense but more volatile flowing of the mind. The flowing of the mind is part of this system that interacts with the body and the world. The mind itself can have some fixed views and more flexible views. This is all perceived in Consciousness.
So there is nobody thinking. Thoughts flow. Consciousness witnesses this. The mind forms an attachment and identity as a thinker, believing itself to be a separate entity that can think. Truly Consciousness doesn't think. The nature of Consciousness is peace, stillness, and infinite oneness.
- Written by David Hall
- Category: The Human Experience
In a previous article it was discussed how evil appears in the world. Let's take a brief look at this again and consider the laws that maintain balance in the universe. Essentially evil appears in the world of opposites as the reflection of the formless Singularity. It can be considered that the world appears as an interplay of opposites, as a separation of the formless Singularity, the Infinite One Being. As the world 'materialises' far from the source, it appears as a hardened, limited, separated multiplicity of forms - the opposite of the Infinite One Singularity.
The ego develops far from the Singularity as the sense of 'I am this, not that', a limited sense of self separate from others. The extreme of the ego is what we call 'evil', where it is so hardened and isolated, and has such a strong sense of its own identity different to the world that evil actions are the outcome. The evil ego is the opposite of the Infinite One Being, imagining itself as separate from others, far from the goodness and peace of the Oneness of Being.
This evil ego and indeed all egos are illusory. They are a mistaken sense of identity within the Singularity of Being. There are not many beings, just one infinite Being. But the world appears through the method of this reflection into opposites. When one of these apparently separate beings realises its true nature there is no longer a sense of separate self. This is what we call enlightenment, where the apparently separate self is extinguished (nirvana) and the pure Infinite Being is effectively realised, although here all along.
You have likely heard of Karma. This arises as a consequence of actions from the Law of Opposites. The Law of Opposites is the universal law that is naturally active in the world, as the world appears by this method of reflection and separation into opposites. The Law of Opposites ensures balance in the universe. What appears must disappear. What is done must be undone. This happens naturally due to the reality of the Singularity, which can never be broken. The Singularity can only appear to be broken in two, and if this is done it will inevitably be undone, as the reality is maintained. It may be that through the appearance of space and time the Unchanging Formless Being appears as changing form, but this must be resolved with the closure of space and time back into the Singularity from which it appears to have come.
In practical terms for humanity and the evolution of souls this means that actions must be undone. This is what we call Karma. Any separation caused by a soul in its human form must be resolved or cancelled out. Any harm to the Oneness must be resolved. Any division in the One must be mended. For the soul that means that any harmful actions that caused division between itself and the world must be undone. The soul must mend this separation of the One. The soul must return to the Oneness from whence it came, and in so doing put the wrongs right. Karma.
That is the play of the world of opposites anyhow. But the underlying reality is the timeless Singularity. There are not multiple souls that go out and get lost far from the Oneness of God. There is only the Oneness of God. This is why it is said that in self-realisation or enlightenment the soul is freed from karma. From the perspective of the soul it returns to the heart of Oneness and resolves the separation it caused. From the perspective of Oneness there never was a soul and there never was separation. The world is a play of opposites in the Infinite One Being.
- Written by David Hall
- Category: The Human Experience
Human senses of perception are highly complex. They've evolved to get to this point. Let's look at the root of perception in order to gain a better understanding of its nature.
The human eye is a complex mechanism that picks out a range of frequencies within the electromagnetic spectrum and returns this to the brain, which in turn formulates the image that we see. There's a lot going on in this complex process, so it will help if we go back to the basics of perception. Perception, whether it is seeing, hearing, touching, tasting, and so on, is founded on the interaction of vibration. When we see something, the eye picks up the vibrating frequency of light and sends that signal to the brain. With hearing, the ear picks up the vibrating frequency of air waves and sends that to the brain. Touch is the detection of contact between surfaces, for example the finger touching stone or the finger touching a petal - there is a sense of texture and solidity that distinguishes the vibrational solidity of a surface.
We could say that perception is an interaction, with the perceiver perceiving what is perceived. But it's not really clear cut and defined in that way. The interaction is fluid. For example, if a bell rings, the vibrating metal of the bell causes the air around it to vibrate. The vibration in the air waves is like a chain reaction causing adjacent air to vibrate. When the vibration in the air waves reaches the ear it is funnelled into the ear canal and vibrates the ear drum. The vibrating signal continues through tiny bones and through the cochlea to auditory nerves that take the signal to the brain. It sounds complex when we break it down like that, but essentially it is the flow of vibration.
We may describe different objects in this flow of vibration, but we could describe the objects themselves as vibrating atoms. We could go deeper and describe the atoms as vibrating energy. When you analyse it the world is a vibrating flow of energy. This vibrating flow of energy conforms to the appearance of opposites, so that we can describe a perceiver perceiving what is perceived, the subject sensing the object. But this conceptualising of the subject sensing the object is the human mind's view of what is happening. The mind thinks, "I can hear the bell." But basically energy is flowing. There is no beginning or end to the flow of energy. It keeps on flowing. No really defined cause or effect, just a continual flow of change.
So what we arrive at here is a recognition that there's not really a subject perceiving an object. The subject and object are only separated conceptually. There isn't a listener hearing sounds. There is a flowing vibration of energy. Our egos might insist this is not the case, and the ego will come up with reasons why it has a real defined existence. The ego will state, "I am the one hearing sounds and perceiving perceptions." But the ego itself is a flow of energy that isn't really defined and separated from the world.
What about Awareness? Elsewhere in these articles it's stated how Awareness is the nature of being - it's all there really is. How does this flow of energy relate to Awareness? The flow of energy that we call the world appears within Awareness, made of Awareness. It is not that Awareness is aware of the subject and object, the person and the perceived. Awareness is simply the nature of being and within it this flow of energy is perceived. It is the mind that conceptualises the sense of subject and object.
It may seem that Awareness is the heart of the subject, but truly there is no subject. This expression of separation of the subject and object and the interaction between them appears as though Awareness has separated itself out, but truly it never becomes separated. The sense of a perceiver, perceiving and the perceived appear within Awareness.
It's as if the flow of energy that is the world is a complex fluctuation of opposites within the simple unchanging singularity of Awareness.