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#3518 - Thursday, April 30,
2009 - Editor: Jerry Katz
The Nonduality Highlights - http://groups.yahoo.com/group/NDhighlights
"The whole universe moves and turns upon emptiness."
Featured is the introductory page to Gilbert Schultz's new website, Seeing - Knowing: Everything is contained in the seeing.
http://www.seeing-knowing.com/
Seeing - Knowing Everything is contained in the seeing
This website is presented to
assist in the re-discovery of your true nature.
It cannot be forced upon anyone. If something resonates as being
true, follow it, so long as the resonance is there. The
resonance is life - the concepts are empty 'pointers' to this
immediate life or living-ness.
The AXIS of BEING is the invisible fulcrum of (your) life and it
is not ‘yours’ - it is central to every activity on
every plane of being.
This axis does not exist – it is a concept and as a concept
it may be useful as a tool for revealing ‘something’.
The entire universe moves upon emptiness - and the essence of it
all remains beyond the appearances of things - just as the axis
of a wheel remains beyond the physical matter of the wheel.
This axis is the sense of ‘I’ in the ‘I
am-ness’ and is singular in its total simplicity and yet
functions throughout the Universe as the heart of the myriad
expressions. It has no perceivable or conceivable substance. It
is what you are. You cannot find it as an object and yet you
cannot deny that you exist - you are THAT singular reality.
The Mask, the persona seemingly divides this wholeness of being
into two. This division is an illusion but one must uncover this
oneself before a clear understanding can reveal itself fully.
Nothing separates you from what you truly are. No concept can
encapsulate THAT pure existence and it lies forever beyond the
grasp of thought. No matter how long you think about it, it
remains as ‘the knowing’, beyond the grasp of thought. The
Mask is composed of nothing but thought and image.
This natural ‘presence’ is wordless, thoughtless.
Understanding is ‘silent knowing’.
This understanding is ever present - it neither comes nor goes.
There is no ‘self-center’ to be found in a sentient
being - it is a conceptual notion and when investigated it is
found to have nothing of any substance apart from thought.
Thought itself is also empty of substance. There is equally
nothing to be found at the place called the axis of this or any
planet, star or heavenly body. One can discover this easily by
observing a rotating wheel. On extremely close examination, the
evidence is clear that the axis cannot be said to exist in or of
these 3 dimensions, which we are so familiar with. Every atom of
this planet rotates around that invisible axis of the planet and
yet no one can find the axis itself because it does not exist as
a physical ‘thing’, it cannot be found, not even with
the strongest microscope. The axis of the magnetic poles is
equally ephemeral.
It is the same equation with self-inquiry.
Everything moves upon emptiness.
The most well know ‘investigator of the self’ was
someone who became known as the ‘Buddha’. The word
‘Buddha’ means ‘awake’. He discovered that he
was ‘something’ beyond ‘matter’ - No Thing-
one could say that 'he' discovered his own invisibility - and
that which discovered that fact was itself ‘made of
nothing’. The discovery is that that which is investigating
its own nature and ‘doing’ the cognizing is naked
awareness. It is unmediated knowing. No medium. The instrument
through which awareness appears to happen is NOT separate from
the awareness, or the cognition. It is an expression of
awareness-cognition. Awareness is not an event - it does not
‘happen’ – everything appears to
‘happen’ in awareness or on awareness as a movement -
this can be called 'consciousness'. Consciousness and Awareness
are not two different 'things'. The eye through which seeing
takes place is not the naked seeing. The ear through which the
hearing takes place is not the naked hearing itself. These
‘things’ are merely instruments. The body is not
‘what you are’ - it is an expression of what you are.
There is awareness of the body
just as there is awareness of the content of mind. One may say
‘this is my body’ - ‘these are my thoughts’.
The puzzling question is ‘who’ or ‘what’ is
it that owns these ‘things’?
In looking for an owner and in dropping all the concepts that
arise about such an owner, one discovers a spaciousness. It is
not an empty void - it is full of ‘knowing presence’.
On further investigation, one finds that this activity of
knowing, does not actually have any substance of itself at all.
It is completely empty of all concepts, including
‘time’. The cognition is forever instant and timeless.
Our belief in cause and effect loses its meaning without
‘time’, which is ‘duration’.
Every phenomenal ‘event’ is like a link in a chain and
not one of them can be exclusively called a cause or an effect.
Thinking and meaning cannot be separated. In the usual sense, it
is as though each ‘event’ is both cause and effect - or
in common physics terms, both are, at one moment a wave and the
next moment a particle. At the core of all substances lies
‘the constant’, empty space. Each minute particle is
suspended in space. A scientist may attempt to convince you that
space is made up of very small ‘things’ or even
‘strings’ (String Theory) but such particles, no matter
how small they are, they must be suspended in empty space after
all is said and done, where else could they be?
Where are you in all this? Isn’t it true that what you are
is a mystery for the mind? Are you the particles or the
con-science? The origin of the word ‘science’ means
‘knowing’. ‘Con’ means ‘together’.
Omniscience is ‘All Knowing’ or ‘All
Intelligence’.
What you truly are is one being - one knowing - one awareness -
space-like in its nature. It is easily known that this clear and
empty space-like awareness contains no separation - no duality
whatsoever.
That knowing, which has never ceased, is not divided into parts
(space-volume) or into fragments of ‘time’ (duration).
It is indeed one without a second. All that appears in this
‘space of knowing’ may well ‘appear’ as
‘parts’ but each one of them is contained by the unity,
the wholeness, in that space-like awareness, which by its very
nature is all inclusive. Everything that you have ever perceived
has appeared nowhere else than in that space-like awareness. All
arguments for or against this or about anything at all, must
appear in that space-like awareness.
What is the axis of your being? Is it not that constant presence,
within which everything moves? The whole universe actually
appears in that knowing that you are. The habit of taking oneself
to be a limited creature is not necessary and in stepping beyond
those limitation of mind, we discover something most
extraordinary. Something beyond belief.
The AXIS of BEING is central to every activity on every plane of
being.
It is the ‘I’ of all sentient beings and is singular in
its total simplicity and yet functions throughout the Universe as
the heart of the myriad expressions. “I and the Father are
one”, a quote from a well known historic figure, is an
expression which communicates the essence of One Being.
The Duality of life as we know it can only be perceived as forms
in motion, ‘matter’, which all moves upon ‘the
invisible axis of being’.
The axis of being cannot be found because it is like space,
absolutely stable, yet unreachable via the instruments of
investigation.
It is ‘where you are Seeing from’.
Like the ‘self’ it remains un-provable and unattainable
and yet ‘the fact of your own being’ is the singular
factor that remains, forever, undeniable.
Nothing separates you from what you truly are. No concept can
encapsulate THAT pure existence and it lies forever beyond the
grasp of thought. No matter how long you think about it, it
remains as ‘the knowing’, beyond the grasp of thought.
The closest one can come to it in mind is the ‘I am’.
‘I am’ in words or thought is simply a translation via
the mind.
The ‘presence’, that I am-ness, is wordless,
thoughtless.
Understanding is ‘silent knowing’.
All manner of expressions may ‘come out’ of this
understanding, yet it remains untouched and totally undiminished
by the flourishing activities of the mind.
The whole universe moves and turns upon emptiness. Everything
without exception is an expression in this Singular Presence.
THIS singular, all encompassing, undivided Presence, is what we call ‘Non Duality'.
-Gilbert Schultz