The Light Behind Awareness

If you feel like you can "lose it" or you "contract" - try looking "here."

PREAMBLE

As I typed up what follows it became clear that the rhetorical thrust and result (specifically, that awareness/experience is not fundamental) might be something that could get me into an argument with teachers that 100% “get it” and that I agree with on most everything they say (e.g. Bob Anderson and Peter Brown). Nevertheless, I’m putting this out there because this line of thinking is what “locked in” realization for me; the fulcrum that made “full realization” omnipresent. Peter Brown said many times: “There’s nothing but experience.” That sounds in direct contradiction to my thesis above, but the difference between the two is mostly rhetorical — and probably splitting hairs (details in footnotes). Further, the underlying philosophical difference is ultimately unimportant as it’s possible for either one to lead a seeker to discover the luminous, Fundamental Unity — and it’s that discovery itself that’s the point, not the concepts that pave the way to it. All concepts and, therefore, all statements, are false — the ones I utter are no exception! Peter would have definitely agreed with that.

So I offer the following as an aid to the seeker that feels they are “close” but still haven’t “gotten it” or haven’t “stabilized” yet. What follows are pointers that helped me get “perfectly clear,” and they are offered in the hope that they may do the same for others. If they don’t help, throw them out. If you’re already “perfectly clear” and you disagree with the statement that “experience is not fundamental,” know that I’m speaking rhetorically — employing upaya as a means to the end of clear seeing — not promulgating concepts to be “believed in.” The following simply is what was more helpful for me, and makes more intuitive sense to me, than the position that awareness/experience is Fundamental Reality.

INTRODUCTION and PROBLEM:

After one has spent some time on the seeking journey, often there are brief “glimpses” of clarity into the nature of “true self” and reality. One recognizes the “suchness” of everything — the “just this” quality of experience/awareness. At first, these glimpses are usually quite short and sporadic. But as one continues the journey and practices, they can often occur more frequently and increase in duration.

As one gets more more familiar with this state, there can come a point where it feels like this perspective can be adopted/assumed more-or-less at will. This juncture can be both a blessing and a curse to seekers. A blessing in that they can find clarity and relief from the tumult of regular life when they so choose. But a curse in that, if they lose track of this intentionality, then the harsh vagaries of life can seem to suck them into reactivity and the myopia of “regular life” once again. Things may seem much as they were before the seeking ever began. Seekers may feel like they “get it” but that they can’t “hang onto it.” They “have insight” but it isn’t “stabilized” and they can “lose it” — or “lose focus” of it. They can apprehend perfect, open awareness, but then “contract” into nominal human-persons with mundane frustrations and challenges.

Herein lies a trap. At this point, many teachers and seekers labor under an erroneous assumption: if “loss” or “contraction” or “identification” are occurring, then that constitutes a problem. Therefore, the solution to that problem must be more mindfulness/continuity of recognition/disidentification.¹ The problem statement and solution sound logical, but that “sounding logical” is what makes it a trap. Beware!

The thinking mind’s bread-and-butter is problem solving; that’s basically its primary function. However, there will be no (real/full) awakening until the thinking mind understands that there is no job for it to do. Whether they know it or not, the supreme Answer that every seeker is looking for is already fully present and functioning.² There is literally nothing you can do about it — and there is nothing you can not do about it! It just is. Therefore, there is no problem to solve! Therein lies the trap: the thinking mind desperately wants a problem to solve in order that it can then come up with a solution. Saying you are experiencing “contraction” is a very juicy problem! And the thinking mind can (and usually will) obsess about solving it. Until the mind can let go of the erroneous idea that there is a problem to solve, the hamster wheel of futile spiritual seeking will continue.

THE SOLUTION (in Brief):

The contraction is an illusion — awareness is fully functional irrespective of the presences/absence of so-called “contraction” (which can be easily verified in direct experience). If the thinking mind can fully understand this, and then looks honestly at circumstances, it will see there is nothing for it to (not) do about the situation! That realization is a key to awakening.

In my contraction essay, I listed several inquiry/investigation strategies to try when one is knowingly “glimpsing,” when one is feeling “contracted,” and when one is feeling blasé/normal/nothing special. Getting to recognize experience/awareness for what-it-is is supremely important. This cannot be overstated or over emphasized. But to get to the absolute bedrock, one has to go even deeper/farther. One has to recognize that awareness/experience is not fundamental.

THE TRAP (in Detail):

People stuck in the trap I mentioned above are, all too often, bombarded by teachers with the misunderstanding that, in order to avoid “contraction” (or whatever you want to call it), you must recognize this nonconceptual-awareness-prior-to-conceptual-thinking as much and as continually as possible.

This is completely wrong.

It’s as wrong as saying: “in order to breathe, you must say to yourself ‘I am breathing’ as much and as continually as possible.” Not only is the “recognition” of awareness (or saying he breathing phrase) completely unnecessary, but even if you pull that off, it makes exactly zero difference to the reality/fact/functioning of awareness/experience (or breathing)! To fall into this trap is to take something that’s basically useless/worthless and then obsess about using/valuing it as much as possible. How confused and deluded do you enjoy being? There are two deep problems here.

The first problem is thinking you must “recognize” awareness or acknowledge it in some special way. True awakening consists in realizing awareness is already perfectly aware and always has been. Awareness is inherently aware — that’s why we call it awareness! When is your awareness not aware of what’s in it?³ When is your experience not experiencing what’s in it? Never!

When this “sinks in” true recognition of awareness/experience should be automatic. After this realization, it should be impossible to not realize awareness/experience for what-it-is, forever and always — in the same way it’s impossible for a healthy body to not breathe. Breathing is the same thing as the body being alive. You can’t stop awareness/experience, even if you wanted to! Therefore, “effortful recognition” is superfluous.

To illustrate, consider this the next time something unpleasant/uncomfortable arises in awareness: How long does it take your attention to “detect” that something unpleasant has arisen? Probably not long; but when it does, can you see that the awareness was already aware of the unpleasantness? The fact of recognizing so-called “unpleasantness experience” is proving that awareness is already there doing its thing. If it wasn’t, there would be no unpleasantness (or anything!) arising in the first place. And that’s all there is to it! Are you having any experience whatsoever? Of course you are! This is the sum total of all the recognition “needed.”

THE SOLUTION (for me) (Recognizing the Derivative Nature of Experience):

When, what we’re calling awakening “sinks in,” this recognition should be permanent and unalterable. There is experience — this should be forever and effortlessly obvious. Realizing that is a kind of awakening; a partial awakening, if you like. But hitting bedrock (the permanent recognition that leads to the End of Suffering) requires a further step — or at least it did for me. You must recognize the answer to the question: what makes experience possible? Not recognizing the answer to that question (which is our default starting point) is the second problem mentioned above.

Awareness/experience is not fundamental. If it were fundamental, then where does it go in deep, dreamless sleep? Under general anesthesia? During death? You know it “goes away” for a couple of reasons. First, there is an “outside” perspective: if you presume other beings are conscious, and one of them that you know dies, it’s pretty obvious their body (the only “tangible” version of them you knew) ceases to be conscious in the way it once was. You can query a partner about falling asleep or undergoing anesthesia for a less drastic inquiry into this. But an even better understanding comes from looking closely at your own experience. You can know awareness/experience “goes away” every night (or under general anesthesia) because, between when it winks out and then comes back, A.) there is never a “gap” in experience/awareness, and yet B.) circumstances have changed — and sometimes wildly — in an otherwise inexplicable way. Even dreams, which most people consider totally unconstrained by reality, have their own kind of continuity. But the stark discontinuity of the comings-and-goings of awareness/experience are highly conspicuous — if you pay attention to them.

When this happens (again, it happens every night, often more than once), pay very, very, very careful attention. Test this:

You know you were aware “before,” and you know you are aware now. But, further, you can “know” you weren’t aware between “before” and “now.” The question is HOW do you know? This is very, very subtle⁴, but very important if you want to get to the bottom of Realty and to the bottom of what you really are. This is the most basic action of the Fundamental Nature.

The Fundamental Nature is That-Which-Knows the difference. It’s not intellectual knowledge/knowing, mind you. But the “knowing” in that experience/awareness itself is lively, radiant, luminous. The “knowing” of the Fundamental Nature is the very “light” or “feeling” of experience/awareness itself; it’s the fact that awareness/experience is not inert, not “just blank.” To “what” (or within “what”) does experience/awareness come-and-go? What is “it” that illumines awareness/experience itself? Peter Brown liked to ask: “What is experience made of?” What is “it” that can tell the difference between when awareness/experience is present and when it is not?

It’s the Fundamental Nature! “It” (of course it’s not a “thing”) is “what knows” when experience/awareness are not present — just as easily as is knows when awareness is present. But — at the risk of muddying the waters — when experience/awareness are not present, that condition/state itself is not an experience.

The absence of experience cannot, itself, be experienced! If it could, then it would be experience, which is impossible. A Cosmos comprised of nothing-but-experience is as impossible as a magnetic monopole.⁵ In order for The Cosmos to exist and be experienced, there must the the opposite “manifested” as well: nonexistence and nonexperience. You need “nothing” in order to be able to also have “everything-that-is.” The Fundamental Nature mutually manifests experience and nonexperience, being and nonbeing, life and death, appearance and oblivion, Yang and Yin, Light and Dark, the manifest and the pure potential, the Known and the Unknown, etc.

As existing, aware beings, we know we have experience; this is obvious. They key point is that, fundamentally, that is not the sum total of all that you are! At bottom, you are the Fundamental Nature — because everything is the Fundamental Nature! Even nothing! The Fundamental Nature does “know” nonexistence/nonexperience, even though our manifest existing/aware/being/thinking side cannot know them.

WHAT IS “BEHIND” AWARENESS/EXPERIENCE?

John Wheeler, (see References page) in his book The Light Behind Consciousness, used the analogy of a sentient star. It went something like this:

Imagine a universe that was inhabited by only a single star. Imagine this star has the capacity to know something by seeing its light reflected back from objects that pass nearby. So the star emits light, and can sense light reflected back… but if nothing other than it that exists in the universe, then it can’t be aware of anything — not even itself! It can’t reflect light back to itself because its surface is the source of the light. Therefore, there’s nothing to reflect any light anywhere. Without a second object in the universe, the star’s still there, still emitting light, and it still has the capacity to know/experience, but it remains unconscious of anything at all. Now imagine that universe suddenly has other objects. Then a planet then shows up near the star and reflects the star’s light back. Now the star knows there’s a planet there and can experience it.⁶

This is why I (and others) say the Fundamental Nature is the “Light Behind Awareness.” Or Consciousness, or Experience, or whatever you want to call it. Alan Watts liked to call the Fundamental Nature “The ‘Which’ Than Which There Is No ‘Whicher.’” This is the true meaning of “One Without a Second.⁷”

If there is no “positive manifestation” that can “reflect” the “light” of the Fundamental Nature, then there is nothing to experience. In this pure “negative manifestation,” the Fundamental Nature is just as “luminous” as in the “positive manifestation” case.⁸ But that radiance has nothing to “impinge” upon; there is literally nothing to “illuminate.” And it “knows” this “nothing” in the only way that “nothing” can be known: as the “opposite of experience” (which is, obviously, not an experience).

“Nothing” is actually a very tricky concept to grasp. Because it literally can’t be conceived of. We mistakenly conceive of “nothing” as: something-that-exists-that-is-utterly-empty. But “true nothing” doesn’t actually exist — it’s the antithesis of existence! This is why the “nothing” of death cannot be experienced — nonexistence must be “characterized” by nonexperience. If death could be experienced, it wouldn’t be death!

CONCLUSION:

If all the above gibberish can be grokked, then awakening should be a snap :) The undeniable fact that experience/awareness is even occurring is the whole, entire point of the spiritual seeking journey, full stop. It IS happening. You know it’s happening. But the how-you-know-this can’t be conceived of — it can’t be put into words. That “just knowing” is the activity of the Fundamental Nature and it is perfectly self-evident.

The “real you” is the only constant in your experience — and the only constant in your experience is the “knowing” that the Fundamental Nature does.

THAT is what you are.

It’s nothing more than that.

It’s perfectly ordinary — yet it’s utterly miraculous.

The conceptual thinking mind (which erroneously believes it’s “you”) can’t do anything about this fact.

The thinking mind can’t not do something about this fact.

There is nothing to be done or not done— the fact is already true! Look and see for yourself!

No action (or nonaction) can improve this fact!

No action (or nonaction) can diminish this fact!

Look within! Can you see?

Nosce te ipsum!

1. I know “disidentification” isn’t a word or a real thing, but if “identification” is a problem, what do you call the solution?

2. It is, in fact, the most obvious thing in the world. It’s so obvious, that it’s too obvious. The very unavoidable, unalterable presence of living experience is so front-and-center that the conceptual thinking mind abjectly refuses to accept that this could be answer — let alone is the answer! The thinking mind is dead wrong. Only when the thinking mind tires itself out and gives up (or just gives up for whatever reason), is it possible for the mind to accept the truth.

As Alan Watts said: “The answer is so easy, that that’s what makes it difficult.”

3. If someone thinks this is possible — which it isn’t — they don’t yet understand the differences between awareness and attention. It’s true that, by its very nature, attention cannot apprehend very much at once. But attention is not what we’re discussing here. Attention derives from awareness; and awareness derives from the Fundamental Nature.

4. Here’s a less subtle test - yet another item from the 8-part conversation between John Wheeler and Charlie Hayes: Were you conscious before you were conceived? Hopefully you’d answer “no.” Do you know you weren’t conscious? Hopefully you’d answer “yes.” So the real question becomes: “How do you know you weren’t conscious?” There is an answer, but it can’t really be put into words. If you tried it would be something like “I know I wasn’t conscious because I wasn’t conscious.” The italicized part really is ineffable, but it’s not complicated. It’s not conceptual, and it’s not intellectual. It’s something the thinking mind can’t “touch.” And bumping up against things where the thinking mind throws up its hands and gives up is exactly where the seeker that wants answers needs to be. It’s never a question of intellectually knowing or not knowing. It’s facing the “isness” of your direct experience (without needing to go to the thinking mind), and just seeing what’s there.

A rebuttal to that might be: “Sure, you don’t remember being conscious, but there are plenty of times you were conscious and don’t remember it (i.e. most of most days of your life).” This is true, but to take that position is to argue a “human” would be conscious before an embryo was formed. I wouldn’t try to convince other people that that was true.

5. If magnetic monopoles are ever discovered, which would be amazing - I promise to re-write this metaphor :)

6. Analogies are never perfect, and this one is no exception. But it’s about as good as they can get. Hopefully it gets the point across.

The star-all-alone is like the Fundamental Nature “knowing” nothing/nonexistence/nonexperience — akin to our “nonexperience” of deep sleep, general anesthesia, and (arguing hypothetically, obviously) death. Our everyday lives are like the star inhabiting a densely-populated solar system with all kinds of “other things” floating around it.

In spiritual circles there is sometimes talk of “cessation experiences” or experiences of “pure consciousness/awareness.” Experiences where “the lights are on” but there are no sights, no sounds, no sensations, no thoughts, no emotions, etc. Some people confuse these rarefied states as something desirable/meaningful. They are not. They are like the star inhabiting a universe with only one other “object” inhabiting it: that single planet that the star illuminated. In cessation experiences it is awareness/experience itself that is the only “object” illuminated by the Fundamental Nature. Rare and rarefied as the experience is, it’s still “just experience.” It’s different from normal everyday experience “only” in that it lacks the bells and whistles of normal everyday “experience ‘objects’” (sensory information, thoughts, emotions, etc.). But that contented, peaceful “self-luminosity” of awareness/consciousness that is so stark and stunning in the cessation or “pure” experience is omnipresent! In the midst of the most mundane circumstances of normal life, awareness/consciousness is every bit aware of its own presence/activity as it is in the cessation experience. The main difference between the two is we are normally not paying attention to the fact-of-awareness in mundane, daily life; in the cessation experience there is nothing to pay attention to except the fact of awareness/experience/consciousness.

7. Some nondual teachers ascribe this phrase to awareness/experience itself, which — in my opinion — is erroneous in the same way as Dzogchen considering rigpa (nondual awareness) as the fundamental reality. If I’m in error and rigpa actually means what I mean by the “Fundamental Nature,” I apologize. But from what I’ve gleaned rigpa does refer to nondual awareness. But nondual awareness is not great/perfect/complete. It’s only half of the manifestation of Tao, Brahman, Buddha-Nature, the Fundamental nature, etc.

Awareness/experience is inherently nondual, yes; and it contains the duality of conceptual thinking without being marred by it. But it does have a second: unawareness/nonexperience! Just as being/existence has a second: nonbeing/nonexistence. Only the Fundamental Nature is one without a second! Of course the label “Fundamental Nature” itself is unimportant; feel free to label it however sounds good to you.

My articulations along this point are due to a great fondness for the Taoistic (and, in general, Chinese) philosophies of Yin and Yang. They strike me as a much more thorough consideration of the “negative principles” and the resulting overall Fundamental Unity than is found in Indian (and derived) traditions — philosophies that would posit nondual awareness is Fundamental/Totality. Someone could critique my point by saying: “You are claiming that the Fundamental is comprised of the sum of experience and nonexperience. But, by your own admission, nonexperience doesn’t “exist” and can’t be experienced. Therefore, experience is the only “thing” that counts!” My response to that is: “Whatever floats your boat.” :)

This arguing is actually fun to me, although I fully admit it’s ultimately pointless. This sort of arguing reminds me of a story I heard in my devout, church-based upbringing. I grew up in a church where baptism was only “real” when it was done by full immersion. The story goes:

A Catholic priest and a Baptist minister were arguing about baptism. The priest said “Just the sprinkling of a few drops on the top of head is all that is needed for baptism.” “Nonsense!” the minister replied. “Unless the entire body is submerged, it doesn’t count as baptism!” “Really?” asked the priest. “If I submerge the whole body, but not the head, it doesn’t count?” “No!” said the minister. “The head, too, must be fully submerged.” To this the priest asked: “What if I submerge most of the head, too? If I leave a little bit of the top of the head out, does that still not count?” “No!” cried the minister. “The entire head must be submerged!” So the priest asked: “What if I submerge the whole body, and virtually all of the head - but I leave just the tiniest, final bit of head dry? Does that still not count?” The minister grew irritable at the priest’s obtuseness: “No! Every last bit of the head, or it doesn’t count!” The priest replied knowingly: “So you’re telling me that none of the water counts for baptism — except the last few drops on the top of the head?”

8. How would we know this if we can’t experience it? The nature of the Fundamental is the “luminosity” — the “knowing of” — anything and everything (and therefore “nothing” as well). But it’s nature never changes — it cannot change — because it is, after all, Fundamental.