Bernard has an important question on the nature of experience:
Can we talk about experience?
I realize now that I am not my experience. That experience is nothing more than mind and emotions stirring up a dust storm, but what about the experience of inner peace and love and the presence of spirit.
My ‘experience’ has been that when I stop being attached to the experiences which come and go then slowly I find myself less attached to a centre called ‘I’ and the experience of peace and sometimes the flow of love or wonder emerges. There is almost the sense that it does not belong to me because the me is no where around.
When that happens then I can understand when healers say they do not do any healing but it flows through them. In the ‘experience’ of unity, when there does not seem to be a centre then it seems that love and inner peace are just there and do not belong to me or anyone.
My question then is about the experience as an ‘I’ and the experience of the Soul if one can also talk about inner peace and love in this way as an experience and who is experiencing it then if the I has diminished or disappeared.
Warm greetings,
Bernard
Hi Bernard,
By your question I can see that you are growing and that your meditations are getting deeper. In your practice you try to set up the conditions that allow inner peace and love into your experience. You do this by stopping your attachment to the experiences which come and go, then slowly you find yourself less attached to a centre called ‘I’. Then the experience of peace and sometimes the flow of love or wonder emerges.
So you ask, “But if the sense of ‘I’ disappears, who is left to experience inner peace and love?” Here when we talk about the experience of inner peace and love, we are talking about the experience of identity. In other words, these are just names for what you really are. The ‘I’ that disappears is just another thought in your mind that you see. It is an imposture and not really you.
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The thought ‘I’ is just an object
This ‘I’ only pretends to be the subject of your experiences, but in reality it is just another object. However, the problem is that experience has both a subject, ‘I,’ and an object. If the subject disappears how can there still be experience?
The answer is that self knowledge is the experience of the subject himself by his self. You know yourself because you are the self. In reality there is no one separate from you who can stand apart and look at the self. The one who tries to do this is just another object that you see and not really you.
The Self you are looking for is yourself
So the answer to your question is that you experience yourself because you are your self and not as a separate thing. We call this your direct experience. Another way of saying this is that you shine by your own light without the need for a separate light. In the same way that you do not look for the sun with a candle, you do not attempt to discover yourself with a separate thought. Rather you just remain as you are: the seer of both, thoughts and the absence of thoughts.
As you do not have to constantly take thought of being a man to abide as a man, you do not have to take thought of the Self to abide as the Self; it is just who you are. Unlike the experience of the flow of energy in healing, the self just is. There is no one separate who can flow inner peace and love. But if you abide as that, people may feel it on the inside.
Where do you experience the world anyway?
If you want to know how experiential self-knowledge really is, meditate on where you actually experience the world. I often mention the fact that you experience happiness on the inside, not in the objects that you see. This is a more advanced extension of that meditation.
If the world was really over there it would be like looking out a window and then seeing the world. So what would happen? First you would see your eye sockets, like the frame of the window. Then you would see the world. But that’s not your real experience, is it? You just see the world. That’s because you see the world here and not over there. So the experience of the world occurs on the inside and not out there. The person is just another object in the world and you are the real subject, Awareness.
Here is another experiment that will help you to perceive that the world is actually on the inside. When you see an object what do you actually see? Like a camera, your eyes capture an image. The image then goes through your optic nerve to your brain. From your brain it goes to your mind. You see your mind. The same is true for the other senses too. So, do you really perceive the world or, like in a dream, do you perceive your mind?
Just take your time and follow these examples step by step. In no time you will see what I mean when I say that the world is in here and not out there. This was always your experience and you just overlooked it. Now you have a fresh opportunity to experience things as they really are.
Inner peace does not come and go
Once you abide here, without mistaking yourself to be an object, you will find that inner peace and love are not a hit or miss proposition. That’s because your self nature does not depend on things that change like the condition of your mind and body; furthermore, because the world is actually contained in you, no experience in the world can take away what you really are. Once you die to the thought ‘I’ and return to what you really are, you will never suffer and die again. This is the beauty of Self-Knowledge.
