You are the world
Yesterday we went into the difference between concepts and reality. In the course of that, we discovered that there is no such "thing" as Texas. Today, we are going to expose the simple fact that there is no such thing as you either, whoever you are.
You and I are not different from Texas. When you investigate carefully, to see if you can locate your "self," all you find is a flow of thoughts and images and ideas and opinions and roles and scenarios and names and identities, all of it made up entirely of memory, and fantasy derived from memory, accompanied by a flow of bodily sensations -- again, muscular contractions and other feelings -- giving you concrete referents (physical anchors), but no solid, separate, stable "you" to be found anywhere.
Furthermore, in discovering that you are nobody, you also discover that you are everything. That is to say, you can, in any given moment,distinguish between your hand and your foot and your head and your house and your car and the earth and the sky and so on, but close investigation reveals that those are all a part of you. In other words, there is no part of you that is separate from any other part, any more than you can separate your head from your body or your heart or your blood stream. They are all parts of the same thing. Different parts, yes, but not separate.
In reality, every living cell in your body is made up entirely of things you normally think of as "outside of yourself," that is, continuous interactions between water (clouds, rain, streams, rivers, ground water, etc.), plants, animals, minerals from the soil, sunshine, an ovum from your mother, a sperm from your father, genetic structures from both of them as well as their parents and so on and on. In other words, everything is related to and constantly interacting with everything else. Physics tells us this. Biology and ecological sciences tell us this. Psychology also tells us this. But far and away, much more important, is that direct observation will reveal, beyond any shadow of a doubt, that nothing is, or can be, separate from anything else. And that includes everything we think of as us.
The beauty of this very radical realization is that, once you actually see it, feel it, discover it for yourself, you can stop pretending you are somehow this isolated, lonely, fragile little ego, suspended as if in solitary confinement, with its own private life and its own problems and longings and fears and regrets and disappointments and resentments and frustrations and worries and so on. In other words, there is no private you, and there is no private life. (It only seems that way, because when we are thinking about whatever we, at the time, imagine to be ourselves, nobody's watching.)
Please don't make the tragic mistake of reducing this to a philosophy -- something you agree with, or perhaps have a problem with, and so on. Find out directly, beyond any question! You have an opportunity to put a stop, once and for all, to this shallow, silly, neurotic misunderstanding.
You are the world. You are the universe. You are the Infinite Consciousness into which all worlds and all experiences arise and disappear. Are you big enough and bold enough to embrace all that you are, to embrace your own Pure, Infinite Being?
- Scott Morrison, posted to SufiMystic
Nondual Highlights 2572
You and I are not different from Texas. When you investigate carefully, to see if you can locate your "self," all you find is a flow of thoughts and images and ideas and opinions and roles and scenarios and names and identities, all of it made up entirely of memory, and fantasy derived from memory, accompanied by a flow of bodily sensations -- again, muscular contractions and other feelings -- giving you concrete referents (physical anchors), but no solid, separate, stable "you" to be found anywhere.
Furthermore, in discovering that you are nobody, you also discover that you are everything. That is to say, you can, in any given moment,distinguish between your hand and your foot and your head and your house and your car and the earth and the sky and so on, but close investigation reveals that those are all a part of you. In other words, there is no part of you that is separate from any other part, any more than you can separate your head from your body or your heart or your blood stream. They are all parts of the same thing. Different parts, yes, but not separate.
In reality, every living cell in your body is made up entirely of things you normally think of as "outside of yourself," that is, continuous interactions between water (clouds, rain, streams, rivers, ground water, etc.), plants, animals, minerals from the soil, sunshine, an ovum from your mother, a sperm from your father, genetic structures from both of them as well as their parents and so on and on. In other words, everything is related to and constantly interacting with everything else. Physics tells us this. Biology and ecological sciences tell us this. Psychology also tells us this. But far and away, much more important, is that direct observation will reveal, beyond any shadow of a doubt, that nothing is, or can be, separate from anything else. And that includes everything we think of as us.
The beauty of this very radical realization is that, once you actually see it, feel it, discover it for yourself, you can stop pretending you are somehow this isolated, lonely, fragile little ego, suspended as if in solitary confinement, with its own private life and its own problems and longings and fears and regrets and disappointments and resentments and frustrations and worries and so on. In other words, there is no private you, and there is no private life. (It only seems that way, because when we are thinking about whatever we, at the time, imagine to be ourselves, nobody's watching.)
Please don't make the tragic mistake of reducing this to a philosophy -- something you agree with, or perhaps have a problem with, and so on. Find out directly, beyond any question! You have an opportunity to put a stop, once and for all, to this shallow, silly, neurotic misunderstanding.
You are the world. You are the universe. You are the Infinite Consciousness into which all worlds and all experiences arise and disappear. Are you big enough and bold enough to embrace all that you are, to embrace your own Pure, Infinite Being?
- Scott Morrison, posted to SufiMystic
Nondual Highlights 2572
