Non - Phenomenal Knowing - 5th Sept. 2016

Father, there was the question that I wanted to ask. You are saying that like outside my perception nothing exists, and to say that it exists would be a belief, would be an assumption. So it is just a very like an eighth-class student's question, like a child's question that I would like to ask. I can't see ultraviolet light; does it mean ultraviolet light doesn't exist? Yeah, so experientially I cannot see ultraviolet light, means I can't feel it, I can't see it. Yeah, so you mean to say... so at best I can say that I don't know, but I cannot claim that I know for sure that it doesn't exist only because I don't experience it. You see, I'll start by saying that something exists out of my perception. Yeah, then no one ever experienced... like experientially I can't feel ultraviolet light, I can't see ultraviolet light, but scientifically we know that ultraviolet light exists.

Can we look at this for just a minute? So we see that for those who know a lot of concepts, they can be called the intellectual. So I am not putting down the intellectual understanding. So you could say that many who know a lot of things, scientists, intellectuals, they bring some value when they appear. Completely fine. Those who have direct experience of that which they are speaking about, you see, those can be called wise. So we are going from intellectually knowing a lot of things to having a direct experience of what is being spoken about, which is not restrictive. You can still say that intellectually I know about the existence of this and the existence of that, but it is not my direct experience, you see? But those who speak about what they are experiencing directly without relying on just intellectual concepts are wise.

And those who have come to this knowing of knowingness itself, awareness of awareness itself, you see, which is the fundamental starting point for everyone actually. But when the being... you know, in all of this is part of the play... when the being is coming to the recognition that it is made up of this awareness, knowing of this knowingness, you see, then those can be called the sages because you come to the fundamental workings of this universe. So we go from intellectual, conceptual knowing to relying on more and more direct experience, and then fundamentally coming to this awareness of awareness, which we cannot even call an experience actually because there is no word to describe it. You can say it's a non-phenomenal experience when you come to this non-phenomenal experiencing of ourselves.

So what both of you said is not wrong, you see? What we are talking at different levels. So there can be a conceptual understanding that something exists; there is gravity, there is... there are oxygen molecules and carbon molecules in the air. You can know these things intellectually, yeah. So those are... that can be part of our intellectual understanding. Then we are moving to a direct experience of what is seen, because coming to the direct experience is what brings clarity. And then when we go beyond even experience, I feel the final experience that we can really talk about is available through the question: Can you stop being? You can experience your own presence, your own being. There's nothing that I have found which is more primal than that. And yet when we ask 'Are you aware now?' or 'Who is aware of awareness?', this recognition we cannot find... we can call it non-phenomenal experience, but it's not really even an experience, you see.