Window on Non-Duality

“There is one alone and there is no second.”--Ecclesiastes 4, 8

“I and the Father are one”--John 10, 30

        Non-duality is that which is neither the One as opposed to Two, nor Two as opposed to the One.  

Experience and the Experiencer

Let us begin our inquiry with the only thing we can state with certainty: “I think, therefore thought exists”, and proceed from this premise to find out what it was that made this statement.

In the first place, it seems to me an undeniable fact that thought is always closely interwoven with experience; for can there be thinking without experience?

Thinking is the reaction by memory to the challenge of the present.  I will illustrate this point.  When someone asks me:  “Where do you live?”, there is an immediate response, and it may not be so obvious that there is thinking.  But when I am asked:  “Where did you live fifteen years ago?”, I feel I have to think it out, which means there is a somewhat slower response, because it takes a little time before Memory, through a chain of associations, brings up the right answer. In both cases we are dealing with thought processes that have been made possible by knowledge, experience, that is, the imprint of the past–whether it be the immediate of the far-away past.  So it must be obvious that without experience there could be no thought, and that therefore thinking, being a purely mechanical reaction, is alway conditioned and never free.  Because it is always the response of memory, of the old, thinking can never be creative.  * Only in meeting the new as the new is there creative being–which really means the going beyond of all thought.    

Now there is another, most significant, point involved in this question of Memory and its operation.  Note that the writer very carefully stated: “Memory brings up the right answer”, and not “Memory is consulted to bring up the right answer”.  Thinking dualistically, it would only come too naturally to say: “I am using my memory to find the right answer”.  Put in this latter form, it would suggest there is some entity which handles the many memory images and sorts them out, in other words, a “rememberer”.

Such a rememberer manipulating remembrances would in actual fact have to have some knowledge about the remembrances and thus would be some kind of discriminating center.  One cannot keep a filing system in order without knowing at least something about the individual files, if only their labels, leave alone the art of labeling them.   Now, a discriminating center would mean a center that thinks and that would therefore in itself entail a rememberer, a discriminating center.  But then the latter would further entail the existence of a third discriminating center–and so on, ad infinitum. In other words, the assumption of an entity that remembers entails an infinite regression of “rememberers”; and however many “rememberers” there are, the series would still be dependent for its existence upon one further rememberer!  Thus, the postulation of the first entity that manipulates memories has only shifted the problem but has not in any way contributed to its solution; and so it must be rejected.

Memory operates through association, that is, one memory image activating another and not through activation by an independent entity which we call the “I”.  If there was activation by an independent entity Suffering would be non-existent.  For the “I” would then leave all painful memories severely alone–having a free choice in the matter–and wallow to its heart’s content in the memory of past delights.  

The reality, however, is different.  When there is acute suffering, the painful memories relentlessly intrude into consciousness; they also create the anticipation of future painful memories, which is experienced as fear.  Faced with these circumstances, Man thinks he can beat Suffering by taking tranquilizers or by engaging in some wholly absorbing activity, so that he may “forget”.  However, the troublesome memory images are not so easily forgotten; they are shifted to the subconscious, so that the pain is only temporarily alleviated, like a festering wound that, instead of being cut open, is merely covered over with a bandage.

Now one more important conclusion follows from our findings so far.  *If there is no “rememberer” and if thought results from the purely mechanical, automatic revitalization of the residue of past experience, then there is no thinker producing thought in spite of the fact that we say “I think”: there is only the resuscitation of certain engrams, memory images that have no life in themselves, which process is activated by the circumstances confronting the experiencer.  So what am I?  “I” is only a bundle of memories, brought into being and given continuity by experience; and the response of this bundle to the present is called “thinking”.

  Having now understood how thinking comes into being, and appreciated the basic position of experience in relation to individual consciousness, I next propose to examine in some more detail the mechanism of experiencing, and particularly how through this mechanism self-consciousness comes into being.  (Fig. 1)

Now, how does man experience? Obviously, anything he experiences is through seeing, hearing, smelling, tasting and feeling–the action of his sense organs.  A child born blind, deaf, and with the senses of smelling, tasting, and feeling totally absent, would be just a lump of flesh, not a sentient being.  It must be realized, therefore, that the external world as we experience it is in a way also our private world–since it is an integral image of “external” stimuli and the particular way in which the sense organs and the brain translate these stimuli into a “picture”, which we call our experience of the world.

This world picture would fall away, would be non-existent, without the equipment of our sensing apparatus; therefore there is no “external” world apart from the “me”: “I” and the Universe are one and the spatial separation between the two is false, caused by ignorance of the process of consciousness. This means, therefore, that Space has no existence, absolutely speaking (see also the chapter “The Outer and the Inner”). Also, as a direct result of this, there is a misunderstanding of the significance of “time” (for without the concept of space, time is not).  There is the idea that I am not only limited in space but also in time, which gives rise to the division between life and death.  Since this way of thinking is based upon giving absolute reality to form, to spatial dimensions, i.e. identification of the “I” with the body—which is now seen to be false--our whole idea of immortality must undergo a fundamental change.

Now let us go one step further, and examine the mechanism of the individual sense faculties. First, let us take the process of seeing, that whole sequence of stimulation of the retina, eye nerve and brain, leading to a visual image.  This process is a continuous one, without interruption, without separation between the seer and the thing seen; it is therefore non-dual.  I would like to represent it diagramatically, that is symbolically, by empty space, signifying the unified field of “seeing”. (Fig. 2.)

 The above is an aspect of non-dual reality about which nothing further can be said, by virtue of its being non-dual: it just is–the world of neti-neti (“not-this, not-that)”. 

Now at this stage it is important to understand that there is as yet no awareness of the process of seeing, nor of the “object” perceived, for the object as such, as a separate “thing”, has not yet been brought into existence.  There is pure seeing which knows no space or time–in other words, thought is as yet unborn.  Because this consciousness is non-dual, it is not yet torn asunder by conflict; it is the pure bliss inherent in Reality.  

Thus far we have dealt with Reality in its absoluteness, that is, without the many forms of illusion manufactured by the mind.  As we have seen, then, this Reality cannot be described, defined or limited in any way and is therefore symbolically represented by Nothingness (Fig. 2)

Any lines and figures that will subsequently be drawn in this empty space represent, therefore, merely relative truth.  They are empirical, illusory; they do not replace Nothingness, but are superimpositions–or rather, impositions by the mind–on Reality.  

Factual Memory

The factor–in itself also illusory–which is the first cause of the illusory world, and of the mind which discriminates (which sees the Reality which is One as Multiplicity), is Memory.  Before we go any further it must be clearly seen that Memory in itself is unreal, a dead thing of the past, which has come into being in association with the capacity of what is called living matter to retain and reproduce certain sensuous excitations.  I did not state “resulting from the capacity of living matter . . . “ for this would imply that in some way the body would be a more primeval reality than thought, whereas in fact the body itself is only an idea, a thought. (see above p. 57)

Let us now proceed to examine what happens when this illusory factor of Memory starts interacting with the real, no-dual process of seeing.  “Interacting” is probably the wrong word, for can there be interaction between the real and the unreal, the factual and the illusory?  It would therefore be better to say that the first illusory cause starts giving rise to a whole chain of illusory entities and processes, thereby obscuring the real.

There is seeing, and Memory brings about recognition. Recognition brings about awareness of seeing through division of the field of consciousness into a seer and the object seen.  This is something which must be perceived quickly, without too much verbalizing.

For example,  I am confronted with the object “tree”.  Memory of a previous encounter with “treeness” now produces recognition.  This is also the stage where the conditioning influence of language begins to make itself felt; i.e. the coupling of the visual impression which the object makes wit the sound “tree” as well as with the image of the written word.  Through interaction of the actual visual impression of “treeness” with the various associated memory images, the word “tree” is brought up.

Also, as soon as there is recognition memory produces the “recognizer”, which is the remembrance of a previous recognition.  Therefore, it can be said that recognition of the process of recognition leads to a self-activating cyclic process which manifests itself as the self-conscious entity, the “recognizer”.  The recognizer also recognizes the apparent vehicle of perception, the “body”, and from early childhood it has been “taught” to identify (i.e., has been made to associate) itself, the recognizing center, with “its” bodily form and with the word “I”.  Then, just as memory brings up the word “tree” every time this object is perceived, it will bring up the word “I” every time there is recognition, that is,, in every act of perception.  Thus the process of recognizing, i.e. Memory, finally brings forward the sentence “I see a tree”. 

So we can see that the subject and object appear in the non-dual world of seeing, after the mind, that is this bundle of memories, has done its work.  Therefore, now, we can say that this the “this-and-that” have been created out of the world of neti-neti, of “not this”, “not that” (Fig. 3)

On rare occasions we may have a direct experience of this process.  For example, has one not noticed how, when waking up from dreamless sleep, for a split second after the eyes have opened, the eyes see, but objects have not yet been recognized, and consequently the seer, the “I”, has not yet been brought to life?  As soon as the objects are recognized, the recognizer also becomes aware of himself and knows that “he” exists.  A moment prior to that, although physiologically no longer asleep, he was still submerged in non-duality–a state in which there was purely the consciousness of Being, of “I am that I am”, but not yet that of “I am”, which is the consciousness of Becoming.   

    What has been explained for the sense of perception of vision, applies in an identical manner to hearing.  Thus there is also the creation of hearer (Fig. 4).

But what has been said for the senses of sight and hearing, applies in an equal manner to the remaining senses of smelling, tasting and feeling, which leads us to the following composite picture of a consciousness molded into the duality of individuality (see Fig. 5A.)

A,  Factual memory; man becoming conscious of his existence as a physically separate entity; capacity of “learning” and     adaptability to changing circumstances

B,  Psychological memory; man becoming conscious of his “individuality”, i.e., his psychological isolation (self-consciousness); feeling of “loneliness” and “emptiness”, resulting in the many forms of escapism and distraction (“compensations”); desire for continuity; birth of “fear”; tendency towards separativism

C,  “Self-realization”; collapse of the impositions of the mind on Reality; seeing through all illusions (such as mentioned under B) and therefore total release of bondage; death of the “ego”; “rebirth” into the pure bliss of non-duality

The sides of the pentagon of Fig. 5A stand therefore really for deposits of memory images.  The figure summarizes, what has been the result of our discussion so far, how through Memory man becomes aware of himself as an “experiencer”, having self-consciousness, and being capable of learning, which is the accumulation of knowledge and experience,through the mechanism of association.  The much greater development of these faculties of self-consciousness and learning in man than in the other animals, has set man aside as a “rational being” and given him a high survival value through his greater skill in finding food, clothing and shelter.  There is learning which is both individual and collective;  this comprises not only the knowledge and experience of the individual acquired in the course of his lifetime, but also the accumulated experience and “know-how” of centuries on which the individual may draw.  As long as the individual is learning, the center produces an inflating movement of its own field of consciousness, due to the expansion of the deposits of memory images.  

It is also to be noted that the schism in consciousness as sketched above has given rise to the notion of “chronological time”, i.e., time by the watch, by the calendar.  The memory of experiencing–that is. Experience–we call the “past”. And by projection of the past through the present we create the “future”.  For example: “it has taken me time to come here; it will take time to return home.”

What has been explained so far concerned man as a sentient being, who is also a rational being and who through his discursive intellect is well equipped in the struggle for survival.  We have seen that through the action of the sense organs the feeling “I am the body” has arisen and that through this identification with form, man can consciously set about the satisfaction of his physical needs (which are not to be confused with psychological needs, i.e., desires).

Now it is important to understand that so far this sentient being which we have “constructed” from Consciousness, has a quiet, undisturbed mind, for the only thoughts that arise are those connected with his physical survival (and none yet with “success” or “failure”)--and there being no contradiction and resistance, and so no fear, in all this–they leave no residue from which conflicts can spring.  Where then does suffering come into the picture?  How is it that with the great majority of us the mind is everlasting turmoil, hardly ever knowing a moment of complete silence? To understand this, we shall have to go deeper still into the nature of memory.  What actually is the content of memory?

Since the matter is somewhat complex, I shall divide Memory into two different kinds according to its contents: there is factual memory and psychological memory.  The division is made purely for the sake of easier understanding by the discursive intellect, whose very being is division and that can only think in terms of classification and correlation.  In reality, of course, all Memory is one and the two types which the mind has arbitrarily chosen for distinction, are at any time closely interwoven.  This makes their clear recognition difficult, for usually where we find psychological memory there is also factual memory and where we see factual memory there lurks also psychological memory.  

By “factual memory” is meant the memory of facts and ideas that have purely utilitarian value for the body/mind complex , for example the knowledge I possess of my trade, of knowing the way to my house, how to play a certain game.  The memory of all this is useful to me in living in this world, in acquiring food, clothing and shelter, and in keeping the body and the mind in a healthy condition.  Never being an end in itself, this storehouse of information–which comprises the accumulated experience of centuries–does not leave a scar on the mind. The mind utilizes it for its needs but is not itself emotionally or psychologically affected in any sense; i.e., it is not incited to any compulsive action that is time-binding (which is the nature of “desire”), and thus contributes to the turmoil of the mind.

Through factual memory and the resulting self-consciousness a sentient being becomes capable of purposive action on the conscious level, which stands in opposition to the purposive behavior of animals, which takes place largely on the unconscious level (and whose behavior is therefore called “instinctive”.

Psychological Memory

It is the memory of thousands of yesterdays with their struggles, conflicts, miseries, little successes and frustrations–it is all that which I choose to call “psychological memory”.  It is the memory of all experience which has some emotional significance, the knowledge the mind depends upon for its psychological well-being, which it cherishes and cannot let go.  For example, knowing that I have an assured income, a bank balance, respectability, a permanently satisfying relationship with my wife, my children, etc.  For what would I be without all this, without my name, my title, my cherished education, my background?  I would literally be nothing, would I not?  So it is this sum total of psychological memory, from which the mind builds its imagined continuity, its security, in short the psychological center which we feel as the “me.”

We have seen earlier how the empirical entity, the self, as a purely biological entity (for it has not yet any psychological problems), is put together from factual memory.  We can now examine, along similar lines, how through psychological memory the self as a psychological entity is built up from its elements.  Let us again first examine the process of “seeing”.  In any seeing, through psychological memory there is retention of the psychological content of that experience, shaping the reactions to any future experience of “seeing”.  In other words, recognition of a past experience gives rise to comparison which contains in it “desire”.  Desire brings about the entity that wishes to direct the seeing, the “seer”.

For example, the eyes are seeing a beautiful sunset.  Now the moment the sunset is over, there is a certain psychological memory of it, namely, the pleasurable component of this perception.  Then there is there is the present experience of seeing, which is acted upon by the past experience.  For the sunset with all its beauty, all the delight that was in it, has gone–and so the present is felt as emptiness; and the moment the comparison has been made, “desire” has been brought to life--the desire to have more of this beauty, this pleasure.  Conversely, if the psychological content of the seeing had been painful, the desire would then be negative, for the less and less, for the annihilation of the memory of the experience–which is the desire for forgetfulness.  This is the reason why, generally speaking, the mind has a tendency to recall that which it experiences as “pleasant”, and to forget the “unpleasant”; hence we speak of the “good old times”!  But all the same, the unpleasant experiences are not really forgotten; they are only stored in the subconscious, from where they act in a more subtle, but also more insidious, manner.

The same mechanism is at work in the process of “hearing”.  The hearer arises only when there is comparison and thus desire is born in the hearing.  The entity that tastes, that smells, that feels arises in a similar manner out of the tasting, smelling, feeling.  It may be interesting to consider here the Buddha’s remarks about the state of enlightenment, when once again (as it was before we were born, or more precisely: before we were born as egos) “in the seen is only the seeing, in the heard only the hearing”, and so on.  Free from desire, this state does not give rise to the seer, the hearer, etc.

In the ignorant state, however, “the eye is not satisfied with seeing, nor the ear filled with hearing” (Ecclesiates 1: 8).  Thus the seer, hearer, taster, smeller and feeler have been brought into being, which together comprise the experiencer who feels desire in the act of experiencing.  This process, not being understood, leaves traces, psychological residues, around which thought processes take shape; hence the “thinker”, the “I”, comes into being.  The “experiencer” is subject to the same chain of cause-and-effects as described for the elements of composing it.  There is recognition, hence comparison of experience and finally desire (in reality, however, this is not a sequence of events that takes place in time; the three phases take place simultaneously, for recognition contains in itself comparison, and comparison contains in itself the element of “desire”).

 It appears then as though there is a center, activated by the pleasure/pain principle, from which all our thoughts and actions spring-a center that drives us on relentlessly, never permitting a moment of stillness and, therefore, clarity, that could lead to liberation–liberation from the center.

The center is the experiencer who continuously translates experience according to his past conditioning, giving rise to thought.  The center is also the process of thought shaping the thinner who tries to guide the thoughts in a certain direction, the direction of the “more” or the “less”.  It is this center, being the dead weight of past experiennce responding to the challenge of the present, which absorbs the present into the past.  For example: yester day I had a quarrel with my friend; its memory has left a scar on my mind.  When I meet my friend to day, it is with this past experience in mind that I react to seeing him.. The person I meet is a picture, an abstraction of what he was yesterday; therefore I do not meet my friend at all.  This example shows how the past always creates its own future which prevents the experience of what is, which is the present.  In other words, the experience of the present is displaced by memory of the past and its projections into the future,, which is the bondage of Time.  The greatest enemy of living in the present is, therefore, psychological memory.

This memory is always born of desire, it is the recurrence of the undigested thought of yesterday, the incomplete understanding of a past experience.  An experience in the present, incompletely understood, creates therefore the future; in other words, memory gives itself continuity, which is Time.  When I am not completely attentive, the full significance of my thoughts and emotions escapes me, and through this lack of awareness, I create my own suffering in the future.

  Let us look at the problem in a slightly different way.  Memory entails recognition, as we have seen, and therefore comparison.  But can we really see that comparison, in the psychological sphere, gives rise to greed and envy, and that they in turn give rise to suffering?  Comparison, in both the directions of time and space, coupled with the urge for a permanently satisfying relationship, for possession (which is really the guaranteed continuation of pleasure), leads to greed and envy.  When the mind compares (in the direction of time) its present state of emptiness, dullness, with a past moment of beauty, of pleasure, it wants to retain or recapture this past glory, it wants the “more”--thus we have “greed”.  In the direction of space: when the mind that “has not”, compares itself with others that “have”, there is envy.  All this must be fairly obvious.  Therefore the texture of Society, that is the relationship of one mind with another, also consists of greed and envy.  

Envy means that all my thought is collective, never individual, for all my objectives will reflect the scale of values of the Society in which I live.  For example, if I live in the materialistic West I may wish to accumulate wealth and power,, for the more I have of these things the more I shall be esteemed and so the more the ego will be gratified and thus inflated.  If, on the other hand, I live in a so-called “spiritual” community in the East where the highest ideal is to be a sannyasi, I may start giving away all my material possessions and go about in a loin cloth, and then I am caught in the urge towards the less and less in order to gain social approval.  In either case I shall have merely reacted to the values of Society and thus have ceased to be an individual.  

So we see that although we pride ourselves on our “individuality” (the word is here, of course, used in the same sense of “uniqueness”), in actual fact the “I” is always imitative, either positively or negatively, and thus merely part of the collective.  This collective consciousness is put together, molded and educated through the centuries, with as its main theme acquisitiveness.  It is this consciousness which acts on and through the particular body with which it is identified (i.e., seen dualistically), creating a body-mind center of self-protection, the “I”.  It is, as we have seen previously, through perception and identifying memory that this self-consciousness arises, and that the deception is brought about of equating self-consciousness with individuality.

We can now also see how false is the saying that “Death solves all problems”, for death of the physical body means merely a movement in consciousness, and not its transformation.  If it were otherwise, we should all be enlightened now, for Death is always there.  Consciousness, which is every grasping, accumulating, becoming, will go on creating mischief and suffering after the death of my body, and–translated dualistically–it will, to suit its own ends, identify itself with some other body.  So if we see clearly that “body” is not of primary importance, but only Mind, and that this body which we consider “ours” is also perceived in and by thought and is therefore ultimately part of Mind, then it will be realized that there is no liberation through death but only through the understanding of sorrow.  By destroying the tyranny of the collective with its false values, the body-mind entity may become truly creative and thus for the first time live as a real individual.  Then it will be seen that there is a “uniqueness” which transcends the limitations of space and time.  But this rebirth becomes possible only through the death of the “I” which like a mirror, reflects and focuses the collective consciousness.

A mind that desires the more and the more, or the less and the less, a mind whose simple needs have become mixed up with and given rise to desires, which craves continually for stronger sensations, must inevitably lead to pain and sorrow.  Such a mind is never free, never at peace with itself-its thought has become a slave of desire–although it has the illusion of being free through its creation of the thinker who is apparently free to think as he pleases.  But all the thinker can do is to recognize, to re-live the past, and act from that–which is therefore not action but reaction, giving rise to the interplay of the many desires with their contradiction and pain.  The thinker lives in a prison whose walls are composed of time–for the desire for the more is bringing into being of “psychological time” (just as our needs, through factual memory, brought about “chronological time”).  The mind that says: “I must practice meditation”, or “I should be more mindful” is at once caught in the net of time–which in this manner is its own invention.  There is a state of meditation, of mindfulness, but the moment the mind strives to attain it, its very striving makes meditation impossible!  The walls of memory that hem in individual consciousness form therefore an effective barrier from Reality, from that which is Timeless.  The mind as we have seen, represents a process of recognition, but the Real, the Unknown, cannot be so experienced, it cannot be recognized, for if it were it would no longer be the Unknown, the Eternal.

The Timeless State

I hope that out of all this, one thing has become quite clear: what is necessary is the breaking down of the walls of time, of the Old, for the New to be.  For that to happen, as Krishnamurti once put it, “the mind itself  must become the Unknown”.  This is, however, no mean undertaking.  For do we realize what is involved in this? It implies the complete dissolving away of all knowledge upon which the mind has built for itself as a center of psychological security.  It means the breaking of all habits, all ingrained ways of thinking, and of the emotional associations which words induce in the mind.  The task is so vast that, it seems to me,, the oft-quoted anecdote of Tao-hsin’s interview with Sen-ts’an has something unreal about it.                                                                                                                                                                    

If it were a simple matter of seeing that there is an artificial entity, the self, that binds us, then surely the simple understanding of what we have been discussing would be sufficient to make us all enlightened on the spot.  But seeing a thing in the abstract, impersonally, fragmentarily, in the conscious mind only, is not the same as living it personally, unreservedly, which means the total purification of both the conscious and the unconscious layers of the mind; and the moment the actual “seeing” is past, it has become “knowledge”, a dead thing that belongs to time and which can–if we are not careful–become another hindrance. For trying to recapture the moment of clarity, the mind comes in after it and so again gets involved in the process of becoming, of desire, thereby creating more psychological time.

You see, one cannot combat time with time, as little as one can wash off blood with blood, and so there must never be a trace left of the old for the new to be, however sublime the past experience may have been.  If I apply a religious prescription, either by living or trying to live up to the prescribed ideal (i.e., by being in a constant state of comparison and therefore of contradiction, for different parts of the mind pull in different directions so long as the individual has not the total integration of the enlightened man), or by doing spiritual exercises–all those strengthen the will and so memory from which the will acts.  Although everybody thinks that we can learn from experience, we can now see this to be a fallacy.  On the technical, factual level we can learn, but we cannot learn from past experience how to become peaceful, how to be filled with bliss, how to love. 

The point is that whatever comes from the mind, serves to strengthen the “I”, for we have seen that the “I” is but the crystalized idea of a dynamic process–Mind made static and given individuality by Memory and body awareness.  So, whatever the mind does leads to aggrandizement of the “I”, but however much this may expand, a finite quantity will always remain finite; the limited, the conditioned, can never become absolute and unconditioned, although its conditioning may become more and more subtly camouflaged.  Real freedom does not lie this way, for the mind acting from a motive–however noble this may be–is not engaged in the destruction of the prison but is merely decorating the bars of its cage. 

I mentioned earlier Tao-shin’s experience, and said that it appeared to contain an element of unreality.  I am not suggesting that such a thing could not have taken place, but for the text-book to hold it up as an example how simple it all is, to be emulated by anyone with singleness of purpose, is misleading–a dangerous half-truth.  More generally, I feel, this is the real difficulty which bedevils all the efforts of the student to get something from the intellectual study of books on Zen Buddhism–however classic these works may be, and however eminent the scholars who composed them. The student will be trying to become the book, as it were, implying a huge oversimplification and not at all the true way to understanding. 

It appears to the writer that what is required is a totally different factor–which does away completely with the intellectual approach: there must be in the individual a certain “tension” before there can be true self-inquiry.  This tension is not the tension of conflict, nor is it the tension of concentration, but it is the intensity of a mind that is completely relaxed but has full Attention, a mind that can be in a condition of seeing itself with clarity, without distortion, and it is only this total awareness--in which all relationship is utilized as a mirror–that will prevent the mind from falling asleep again, from living in the same old rut.

This unique “tension” is an inherent capacity of Mind but it gets lost through the constant movement of stimulation and relaxation–which are the spasms of another kind of tension (the tension of desire and conflict)--to which the mind subjects itself in the pursuit of its usual activities, i.e. so long as it is captivated by the many forms of destraction and does not know where the Real lies.  This unceasing process of stimulation and gratification, build-up and let-down of vital energy, leads to exhaustion and to dependence, and thus to habit; and when the mind has become dependent upon externals, the innate capacity of Attention, which of its strength, its virtue, as gone out of it.

It is like striking a key on a piano; if the string has no tension in it, it will emit no note when struck.  But when it has the proper tension, the slightest touch will make it respond.  When the mind is in this state it will know how to ask the right questions in the process of self-discovery.  A mind which has built up awareness–not–knowledge–will then spontaneously be in a condition that it can devote its whole life to pursing of what is True, regardless what the outcome of the search may be–for such a mind is no longer concerned with its own success or failure.  

Conclusion

Can anything more be said about that state which comes into being when the mind itself has become the Unknown?  It would be presumptuous to attempt such a thing.  We can only say that from the standpoint of the man who still lives inside the prison it appears as a state of complete Freedom, for there is total freedom from Ignorance which produces the shackles.   Whereas previously Reality could not be found because of the clamor of the individuality which covered and concealed it, in the enlightened state the impositions have been wiped away and Reality shines forth in all its purity. 

It seems to me that if we can understand the problem of Non-Duality fully, if only intellectually for the time being, that understanding will bring its own action, and we shall then be well on the way to the understanding of all problems, whether it be the problem of Suffering, the riddle “Who am I?”, or that of “life and Death”.  For all these are in essence the same problem, that of Consciousness,, which contains in itself Everything.

We have seen in the course of our inquiry how Suffering came about; we have also seen how with the death of the ego there is liberation from suffering and the return of the individual to the state of Nothingness whence he came (Fig. 5).  That is not to say that with liberation something new comes into being,, for the state of Nothingness is with us also in the intermediate state, between birth and death, only we do not perceive it–and if we do, faintly, we do not want to live with it.  Finally, if we have thoroughly understood the preceding we shall also see that the separation we normally make between life and death is caused by our ignorance, by the fact that we have never properly gone into the problem of Non-Duality.

Both what we choose to call “life” and “death” are contained in that greater Life which is non-dual, rock-bottom reality (Fig. 5C). The highest form of living is attained by the enlightened person while still in the body, for he has completely dispelled the trick which psychological memory played in creating the illusory “I”.  By virtue of the same understanding, the other trick, played by factual memory in creating the “experiencer” and in identifying thought with the body–giving rise to the feeling “I am the body”--is now also dispelled, and it is realized that there is neither birth nor death.

But we do not have to be enlightened to see the simple truth of all these things.  The ideal of seeking fulfillment in the future arises only when there is incompleteness in today’s experience, so there is the desire for continuity.  Self-consciousness, being brought to life by Memory and being in itself of the nature of Memory, a continuity, is therefore given substance by lack of understanding of action in the present.  By fully understanding every experience–which is to live intensely in the present–the mind is freed from the illusion of individuality, and hence from its limitations in space and time.  In my ignorant state I had identified myself with the body; hence I had also granted absolute reality to other bodies, and other individualities became “some-bodies” to me.  So I imagined I was born of my father and mother, but now I know this to be false.  I have always existed and always will, for that which exists is Timeless: there is no separation between God and man.  Is not Truth stranger than Fiction?

Even only intellectual understanding of all that we have discussed–if it is thorough–will place the reader at once beyond all the religious books; from this point he will need no more crutches, and the fear of death will have been completely eradicated from at least the conscious part of his mind.

Where previously Death had always depressed us, catching us unawares and forcefully reminding us of something deeply pushed away–our own transience and total insignificance–now, in the fulness of understanding, its manifestations no longer fill us with fear.  Before, when suffering a so-called “bereavement”, a most distressing feeling of emptiness descended upon us; now–living permanently in that Void having recognized it as both our natural substratum and habitat–there is quite a different experience when faced with the physical death of a close relative or friend.  It is clearly perceived that the pain formerly suffered was not sorrow for the deceased; the emotion not the final expression of a “love” so sadly ended forever–but that it was the acute psychological disturbance consequent upon the falling away of a relationship upon which we depended and from which we obtained some gratification, some shelter, in an otherwise ungratifying and hostile world.  As we then used to say: “The bottom has fallen out of my world”--but it was the unreal world of “I-consciousness” which has to break up sooner or later, in any case.

From the standpoint of Emptiness, i.e., Eternity, it is now apparent that the exclusivity of relationship is but another defense mechanism of the mind that cannot face its isolation and transience.  So the clinging, grasping activity of broken up, individual, consciousness, expressing itself as “attachment”, always strengthens the need for further attachment, because it is born of a primordial fear of Reality.  It is this vicious circle which prevents the integrated state of wholeness, the timeless state of Love, from coming into being.

When there is enlightened understanding, not only shall we be able to say confidently: “Death, where is thy sting?” but what is more:  Death will now be seen positively as our friend.  For if you love Liberation how can you hate Death?  The way to liberation necessarily involves death, does it not?

The man who fully understands can be said to have “love”--not just love of the Beautiful and the Light, but also of the Ugly and Darkness.  He loves Death. To be more precise: He loves, full stop.

When he has come thus far, he will already have gone beyond a more intellectual understanding which is still to be involved in the play of the opposites.  He knows that as long as there is a window on non-duality, as long as he is a mere onlooker at Reality, he is not of it, he is still lacking the Essential, he is still in Ignorance.  For him there is only one solution, one answer to life: to break the window and be free, for the window is none other than the prison wall.