Awareness Is Aware Even of Attention - 28th September 2017

In a funny way or in a synchronistic way, Rajesh posted a quote of yours yesterday which said: 'Only that exists on which there is attention.' It's a stunning quote. But the other thought, the feeling that came up for me is: Okay, what is attention? You know, you said only that exists on which there's attention, and then the next point of inquiry is: What is this extraordinary quality of attention? I remembered a quote that Rupert Spira mentioned, and it was stunning also, and I wanted you to comment on it. He said that attention is awareness when turned towards an object. Attention is awareness turning towards an object. And the next feeling that came up is: That's amazing, then what is attention when it turns upon itself? What is awareness when it turns upon itself? I want you to just drop that into the field and whatever you would like to respond would be amazing. Thank you.

First, apply the first quote: 'Only that exists that has your attention.' So clearly here we are speaking about our phenomenal experience. Can we say that there is a road outside this room? Not conclusively, only because we might hear some sound from the road. So because attention is on that, you can say that there is a road there. The rest is just a presumption. But in that way, the first quote is meant: that only that exists in this phenomenal play that seems to have our attention.

So then, what is attention? And this quote is also very nice, what Rupert said. From what I understood, you said that attention is nothing but awareness turned towards an object. So fundamentally, what we're doing is we're exploring the nature of this attention. Now, many times the clue for you is that the Self is without qualities and attributes. The Self is without the veils of the greater Self; it is without qualities and attributes. Now, in a phenomenal plane, there is one thing—it's not really a thing—one thing that comes close to this, which is attention. Because I say: What is the color of your attention? You see? And yet it is not the Self. It is an aspect of the Self. Why? Because awareness is beyond this limitation of any sort, whereas attention is not.

So if all of us were to unmute our minds and to start speaking, you would not have the attention to hear everyone. As what happens with many children, they are very tired because all the children are asking for their attention all the time. Now, if you are interacting and then you start interacting and you start interacting, you see that this quantity—unlimited type of attention—runs out very quickly. But we can never say that about awareness. So the real distinction between the Self, awareness, and attention is that attention is like the phenomenal play of awareness. Everything is, but a very, very intimate phenomenal play of awareness is this attention. Because you cannot find any quality to attention except that it seems to run out. Never an out of awareness, but you can run out of attention.

So yes, when it is turned towards an object, yes, it's a nice way of explaining it. It's not bad. Or it's so funny, whether actually attention actually turns or whether it is the object on the screen which changes. This is contemplation for us. What you can really, really say is that attention doesn't seem to play unlimitedly in this phenomena, and only that can be perceived. You cannot perceive without attention. Perception works in coordination with attention. But Being uses attention to taste this phenomenal world, to taste the phenomenal. That's where all these primal contemplations come from: 'What is that? When the tree falls in the forest, does it make a sound? Nobody else in the forest, the tree falls, does it make a sound?' Also scientific experiments that show Schrödinger's cat—the cat is in the box, there is no observer of it, is there now a cat? It's an experiment about this. What is the observer, the observing quality in this phenomenal realm? The power of perceiving operates on this power, so this is attention.