Awareness Is Beyond Subject and Object - 30th November 2017
Saar (Essence)
Ananta guides seekers to recognize their existence as a self-evident reality that precedes all concepts and perceptions. He emphasizes that the self is known through innocent self-awareness rather than mental comprehension.
Your existence is here, but the idea of it is coming and going.
The self is completely known to itself, but when it plays with any notion, it seems to lose itself.
Satsang is a rehab for consciousness, by consciousness, to shake off conceptual dust.
contemplative
Transcript
This transcript is auto-generated and may contain errors.
So we'll go very soon, and stop me where you feel or where you feel like you lost me. You just stop me there. We need to beat that one: how you know something now. So let's go slowly on that. So you have a perception of something; you have the experience of phenomenal experience or something. So there's a perceptual input coming in and you feel like, 'I know this experientially.' There is a body sitting in front of you, these words are being heard—all this is perception that happens. So that is what knowing is. How do you know the earth is round or spherical? It's a conceptual reading, actually. See, you have a concept of it which has come from credible sources—our parents, our teachers, you see, have told us that the earth is spherical. And also there is perceptual evidence; we have seen photos. So you have the concept of it.
So for example, if I say there are trillions of stars in the sky, nobody has counted them—maybe somebody has tried—but it is a computation. So you have a perceptual knowledge, you have a conceptual knowledge, and then you have a computational knowledge, an inferential knowledge. Now, what knows all of this? Let me give you a simpler question: What knows your existence? What type of knowledge is your existence? How do you know you exist? Do you have a perception of your existence? I say, can you stop being you? That being that did not stop—did you have a perception of it? Here, yes, but if that idea was not there, yes, because all ideas, they come and go. Does your existence also come and go with the ideas? We can change. So this we can change, actually. In this moment, you have no idea that you exist; it takes a moment to pull an idea, but your existence is prior to that.
So this, let's go deeply into the question: Can I stop being? And in fact, try to stop being. Try to not be. Are you succeeding? Are you succeeding? If you try to not be, try to not be now. Making progress, isn't it? No matter how hard we try, this existence just exists effortlessly. That which exists effortlessly, no matter how much effort we make, it does not go away. So your existence is here, but the idea of it is coming and going. So it is independent of the idea, of the concept. Okay? Are you seeing your existence with your eyes and hearing it with your ears, smelling it with your nose, tasting it with your tongue? Are any of these senses helping you figure out that you exist? So it is not a perception in that way. All the concepts also, we said, they are coming and going. So what is this knowing that knows of your existence, and does it know itself?
That's how we operate in this Satsang, because all these objects are coming and going. That's why the sages are saying that that which is coming and going is not the reality; that which will remain, the unchanging, is the reality. Now, if your question is, 'Is that an object or a subject?' and you say that 'I know it is the subject,' but how do I see this for myself? So, you know you exist or no?
Yes.
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What knows that you exist? Now, when you say 'I am aware,' it is the knowing of awareness itself. Self-awareness is everything in that statement 'I am aware.' Because when you say 'I am sitting,' you know what sitting is. 'I am standing,' you know what standing is. 'I am angry,' you know what anger is. In the same way, when you say 'I am aware,' it is the dissolution of the subject-object relationship, but it is the subjective knowing of itself. Awareness does not know itself as an object, actually. It is beyond subject and object. Maybe you lost me somewhere, but when we say 'I am aware,' what is it that we are referring to? You see, mind cannot help you, all concepts cannot help you. It has to become very, very innocent here. There is no concept, no learned knowledge, nothing. And suppose here we are blank. 'I am aware.' What is the distinction between this 'I' and 'aware'? All objects are gone. They don't matter here. And this truth is apparent to you when you're empty of all notions.
See, this is the conundrum: we feel that we will know it when we have the right notion of it, but this Self is completely known to itself. But when it plays with any notion of itself, it seems to lose itself. With me? So if you pick up any idea about it, that is not it. And as you have dropped ideas, that is it. Now, are you able to articulate it? Maybe not yet. Anyway, are you able to explain it, what you found? Is your mind convinced that you found something?
No.
Sometimes they can know. You keep saying, 'Not here, not here.' It's not so. Independent of all of that, in this moment, you are it. Independent of whatever objects might be perceived, independent even of this consciousness perceiver. Some of these words might not immediately hit home, but at least they get seated. That which is aware even of your existence, even aware of the perceiver itself, the phenomenal consciousness—step back. You step back even from this clear subject and object and we see that 'I am aware.' All boundaries between the dynamic aspect of the Self and the non-dynamic, the non-phenomenal aspect of the Self, start to resolve. They start to fade away. Only the Self here. No distinction is valid. Who is the subject for who? Who is the object of all this? Gone.
No, in a way, but not really, because all intelligence also is appearing from out of this one. So it is not a sort of an inert seeing. Many times you can pick up this idea, and many spiritual paths also have this idea, that the Self, the ultimate Self, is like one—sorry to use the word—but dumb thing, you know, just sitting there. No! But it is the supreme intelligence from which all intelligence arises. It is the all-knowing from which all these different types of knowing arise: all this perceptual knowing, conceptual knowing, emotional knowing, knowing of existence itself. All of this comes from that. So that must be the source of all knowingness. But that knowingness is beyond mental comprehension. That is the ground on which consciousness is born. It's not even ground like ground; that nothingness from which all things are. That which is the source of all gives birth to all and yet remains untouched, dissolves all back into itself and yet remains untouched.
So it might seem like 'I don't get anything' when I remain empty of concepts, but all of this becomes immediately apparent. You might not have the words yet to translate this insight into explanation. That is fine. That's why I keep saying that you will go with any insight, stay with your natural insight, because that is all that is happening from here. Isn't speaking of that what is so natural to you right now? None of this has ever been lost in reality to you.
Now, the only thing that we are dealing with is the withdrawal symptoms from concepts. Because if you see that as I am motionless, I am not suffering, I am not missing the truth—it is so apparent. But when the concepts of my individuality come again, it seems like there is some magnetism in there, there is some power in them to grab us. So that's why gurus and Satsang are a rehab for consciousness itself, by consciousness itself. And what is the discovery? Consciousness itself. I want you, and this longing for this in your heart can go no other place. Is this you? When you see the pristine reality of you, then the shaking off of all this conceptual dust is the best. So we come every day to Satsang to shake off this conceptual dust that we picked up along the way, and our pristine shining truth is revealing itself.
The Thread Continues
These satsangs touch the same silence.
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