Jñāna | Wordless, Heartfelt Self-Knowledge

What is the difference between an intellectual understanding and true realization?

It may seem vast.

Immense.

Which is somewhat true, but the difference is also subtle.

When the realization sinks in, when you're immersed in it and no trace of individuality can be found, when love and peace replace that dissatisfaction and gloom, then when you try to look back with the mind and retrace the steps to get here, it is quite hard to say what exactly has changed!

The difference is subtle.

There was a point at which you found that the Earth is round, but so large that it seems flat from your point of view. Knowing this made no immediate change to your experience of the world. It still looked flat.

But then one day, while staring at the sea, it hits you.

The horizon!

That line where the sea meets the sky is where the Earth curves just enough to disappear from view. That is how far it takes for the curvature of the earth to be perceptible.

And this realization suddenly gives you a sense of the immensity of the planet.

You knew the Earth was big and round all along. You've also been looking at the horizon all along. But suddenly, in a flash, the understanding and this ordinary experience come together.

You now see the same ordinary experience in light of the understanding, and somehow that experience is transformed even though nothing has really changed.

This is closer to the truth of how the wisdom teachings dawn on you.

But by drawing a stark line between an intellectual understanding and some other special kind of understanding a barrier can be set up. Instead of trusting what you have understood, going deeper into the same understanding, there is the idea that something more must be gained or experienced.

But it's not like that.

The same basic understanding just goes very deep.

The depth is infinite.

If you stay with the very same simple fact that there are no separate selves, you will see how deep this insight goes.

How true it is.

And the same fact will keep astounding with new revelations about the most commonplace experiences. Rendering this very same stream of consciousness in a very different light.

Instead of a path from point A to point B this is a spiral.

You just spiral deeper and deeper, sink into the truth.

The nature of Reality as it is, unfiltered by beliefs and assumptions.

And the facts of the matter become crystal clear. So clear that the intellect runs out of questions, and the proofs and signs are everywhere.

Give it a chance for this wisdom to sink in, but without desiring an explosion. Without waiting for a future event.

At any moment, in any experience, if you look at all this as that distant horizon, and notice the infinite context in which the horizon itself exists, your understanding and your experience will come together.

There was a moment a couple of years ago when I was out on a hike.

The sky was clear and as I looked up at the sun I suddenly saw it in the light of all this knowledge acquired over the years.

It suddenly hit me that this warmth, this wind blowing, the plants, this body, everything linked back to this star.

This is what it's like to be eight light minutes from a star.

I had never felt as near to the Sun as in that moment.

The warmth on the skin was intimate contact with this immense body of light and energy. Contact with all those tiny points of light in the night sky.

The Sun and this warmth, even this knowledge, had been there for so long. What made it sink in was simply a quiet contemplative process.

An interest.

In the case of the search for an understanding of the Ultimate Reality and the Self it also worked out the same way.

The same old teachings, same old knowledge, and the same ordinary experiences fell into place.

So amazing.

So obvious.

So true.

All the necessary ingredients were already here, and in a flash they came together to illuminate this same world, same mind, same stream of consciousness in its true context.

That there is no one here that can claim to possess Sentience.

Most definitely Sentience is a facet of Reality and not of individual entities.

But at the same time, because You most definitely are sentient, You are at no distance from the Ultimate Reality.

You are at the absolute Ground Zero, at the Heart of the Singularity.

Having listened to such teachings you don't need any new knowledge or any new experience.

You just see these same experiences in the light of this Understanding.

The same view, the same knowledge, but with an absolute clarity on how this basic fact matches the experience, and all these experiences match this basic fact.

In this case you don't need to be out on a hike on a sunny day, or at the beach looking at the horizon.

All experience, any experience, can come together with this understanding in that flash of Realization.

So, let's revisit the basic facts.

There is no individual me or you.

There are no individuals as such.

Because Sentience cannot be possessed by things.

Objects do not contain a sentient subject.

And the Sentience that perceives objects is not just another object.

Sentience is the factor that makes perception possible.

This is the most obvious and most striking facet of Reality.

And who can dare to claim possession of Reality other than the most deluded thought.

That is the ego.

A misguided concept.

An unexamined belief.

Just an idea that has no substance to it in the face of Truth.

Now, apply this understanding to the experience of this moment.

One fact is undeniable, and that is that You Are Here.

But are you here as an individual?

As some particular thing that can be observed?

Take the next perception that appears.

A sight, a sound, a sensation.

Most definitely it appeared to You.

Precisely that is You.

This Aware-ness.

This Sentience.

Does Awareness have a face? A voice? Some unique tumbprints?

Does Sentience have a personality or personal history?

Does giving a name to a stream of experience make it your identity?

No!

All these concepts of being a person, an individual mind, body, or soul, are in opposition to what is being known directly here.

Not as a concept or belief, but through the fact of being aware.

Every other attempt to define You depends on imagination and concepts, which are far from the truth.

In direct experience, what You actually are is simply this Sentience in which these phenomena can appear and are appearing.

There's no trace of individuality, no person present at all.

Contrary to its apparent flatness, the Earth is in fact round.

Contrary to to popular belief, this sense of being Here and this experience are not proving You to be an individual person.

This is proving that You are Sentience itself.

That factor of Reality which makes perception possible.

This Fact matches all experience, and every experience matches this basic Fact.