Jim Carrey: “I used to be a guy experiencing the World. And now I feel like the World and the Universe experiencing a guy.”
Comment: Hi everyone. I heard this quote and it floored me. Would you say that everything in non-duality boils down to this? Is the goal to simply shift your perspective to something like this, and then you’ll feel it and “get it?” Or is it something more complicated than this?
James: No, is isn’t more complicated, but Yes, there is more to it. Carrey is in the ballpark because freedom and non-dual love is a shift from one perspective to another. Shifting, however, isn’t quite so simple. Let’s analyze Carrey’s statement.
Whats right is the idea that he is something bigger than “a guy experiencing the world” which happens to be true for everyone. But what’s wrong is the fact that “the world and the universe” are insentient concepts. Concepts don’t experience anything. He uses the world “feels” which show that he suspects he is something more but is not clear about what it is, so he uses familiar words that suggest scale, vastness, transcendence, etc. Let’s give him a few useful words to make his realization more workable.
So what does he actually mean? He is talking about his essence, unborn formless existence shining as whole and complete ordinary bliss awareness, or consciousness if you prefer. This awareness is the reason he is aware of the Jim Carrey entity. Humans are self-aware sentient animals.
We aren’t independently sentient but we borrow awareness from our essence, original unborn formless ordinary ever-present consciousness, the only knower. That entity is not a human being. To use a religious metaphor “man is cast in the image of God.” People say I know who I am all the time but they are referring to the body/mind/sense complex, the “created” self, an assemblage of parts. The person has a relative, conditioned existence. It lives and dies. The real self is unconditioned.
The original person that isn’t a person, doesn’t live or die. In Vedic literature it is personified as a Universal Person. So Carrey is very close when he uses the word universe. It is eternal/immortal. It is present before the body is conceived, born and given a name. It is present as the created person goes through life’s inexorable changes. And it is present when the body dies. It doesn’t go or come. It is the substratum in which things “live and move and have their being.”
When you understand that you are this always present knowing witnessing awareness, it is possible to shift your identity to your “original” self and cheat death. This transfer is usually hard work and takes time because duality…the idea of birth and death…is hard-wired, but it is certainly doable.
And the benefit is wonderful: you are incapable of worry about the big existential questions: who am I ?, what is this strange meat tube that seemingly encases me? how is the world created?, are differences real?, etc.
As you work on yourself in this way, you start to feel invincible because nothing that happens to the body/mind/sense complex changes you. You become increasingly satisfied with yourself as you are and with the world as it is. Why? Because the real you, the only knower, witnessing consciousness, is bliss. Your created self experiences bliss on and off according to conditions, but your uncreated self’s bliss is neither on or off because it…you…are non-dual bliss! There is no one, like God, looking over your shoulder. You shine and the whole creation shines after you.
People can’t conceive of this because they are so extroverted and identified with the body that the description above seems like a fantasy beyond their reach, yet it is entirely possible. Assuming you are more or less fed up with the boring, habitual, dependent personal self and are willing to listen to Vedanta and follow the five steps it presents to actualize the vision of non-duality. This is my experience.
