Nick: Hello, Sundari.
Is this a valid discrimination?:
I stand at point A and ask,
Am I aware?
I walk 10 paces (100 paces, 1,000 miles)
and arrive at point B and ask,
Am I aware?
Whilst undoubtedly the objects in awareness have changed, I ask,
What has changed about awareness?
Nothing… Awareness is unaffected and unchanging.
Conclusion: distance does not affect awareness, is mithya and unreal, as distance ultimately resolves into nothing more than a change in the objects.
Rinse, repeat with time, using seconds/minutes/years instead of paces and miles.
Same questions… same answers.
Same conclusion.
Time and space are mithya (and actually the same thing, as differing apparent points in either space or time resolve into no more than a change of the objects arising in awareness), as wherever and whenever the question “Am I aware?” is asked, the answer is yes and the factor of awareness remains the same, what is known changes but the knowing principle never does.
Awareness is free of space and time.
It is eternal and ever-present.
And having actually done the above instructions as Nick.
“I am that principle” becomes the only logical conclusion.
Sundari: Yes, correct conclusions, but who is asking “Am I aware?”? Who is the “I” that is standing or walking? Awareness does not have to ask, because it always knows itself, it does not stand or walk anywhere. Therefore I am the knower of the asker, the stander and the walker. ☺
This is the teaching on no movement. There is no place that the self is not, so it is not possible to step out of it or to go anywhere where it is not. Hence the wise see action in inaction and inaction in action. If reality is non-dual awareness, which we know it is, then there is nothing other than awareness. There is no such thing as past present or future, no time and space (therefore no distance between anything), no change or causality. These are all objects known to awareness. The power of maya to delude is so pervasive and persuasive that it makes the changeless appear to be changing, i.e. the apparent reality. Causality is another word for Isvara/maya. It causes the universe in conjunction with awareness and it appears to cause things to change.
Things appear to happen sequentially “in space-time” and move from A to B because the mind can only experience one thing at a time. Isvara set it up that way or we would all go mad, in fact when the filter between the subtle and causal bodies is damaged, madness is often the result. Time has no objective reality. It is the distance between a memory of an event and another memory or current experience. Time is an illusion. It “begins” when maya manifests and the creation appears. The reason science cannot figure out what happened or existed before the “Big Bang” is that there is no information from which to reason – no time or space. It will remain an unsolved mystery that only self-knowledge can resolve.
As the jiva we cannot step “out of time,” because we do not stop experiencing as long as the body is alive. The essence of the experience of events (time) is stored in the causal body by Isvara, the vasanas, enlightened or not. How we relate to experience is determined by the level of self-knowledge or lack of it in the mind.
Memory is a function of the mind which catalogues and categorizes events that apparently took place, as they take place. That is why it feels like time passes – memory makes it appear as if we have had many different experiences. But there is just one unbroken experience, “all” the time, and that is consciousness, me, the real, ever-present, unchanging witness of the apparently real and always-changing experience/experiencer. Memories (experiences) are reduced to thoughts which appear in the subtle body. If you take yourself to be the jiva, you identify with the thoughts/memories/experience, taking them to be real and to be “yours.” This is the hypnosis of duality, mithya – which is how most people experience life and the world.
You – awareness, the changeless – observe time, space, experience and are unaffected by it. Nothing ever happens, for you; you cannot go anywhere or do anything.
~ Love, Sundari
