The view from beyond spacetime

Imagine being completely immersed in a story. And in this story, which is mainly about a person, there is an odd kind of twist. The story begins to refer to its listener. At first the story remains from the person's point of view.

In the story 'I' refers to the person. And this person conceives of the listener as God, Divine Consciousness, some Higher Reality. But persisting along this line, the story fumbles. Because it has a glaring plot hole.

Clearly the one listening to the story knows who is listening.

That's you!

That alone is the Self.

And at this point it is realized that the meaning of 'I' and 'Thou' is the wrong way around in the story.

The understanding of what is known and unknown, something and nothing, present and absent, it's all the wrong way around. The events in the story have never really been occurring to you. And the person to whom they were supposed to be occurring is just a character in the story.

Ajata is the completely out of human context point of view.

The absolute standpoint from where nothing ever really happened. Nothing is happening. Nothing is changing. The events and characters, and the space and time in which they take place, are all seen to be subjective. Imaginary.

Part of a story, which has no real substance to it, because its entire premise is flawed. Because in it what is imaginary is being taken to be real, and what is real is trying to be imagined. And, most glaringly, what is only an imagined character is taken to be the self. And what is truly I, is taken to be apart from the Self.

But while you're engrossed in the story of this person, all this seems unattainable. Incomprehensible.

When in the story you first hear the insight that space and time are relative, there's a sense that this has major implications. That this should fundamentally change the way that you see yourself and this world.

But it doesn't really happen. The mind just doesn't have an alternate to its model of space and time. It has no other way of telling stories. And so even though it's vaguely known that all this is relative and subjective, life goes on the same way.

Everyone agrees that Einstein was right. But everyone continues to be completely immersed in the affairs of whatever point in spacetime they seem to be in. To be fair, even Einstein didn't live his life out in a way that lived up to the true depth of his insight.

But the wisdom teachings point to a final Realization, which does bring about a radically and fundamentally different way of looking at this same world.

In Advaita Vedanta this is called Ajata. In Buddhism this is called Sunyata.

This is the Absolute Standpoint where the model of space and time is finally discarded. From here it is seen that there is no birth or death. All is unborn, uncreated, without beginning or end.

That there's no trace of any conscious entities that can exist or cease to exist. And so there's no one to seek or be liberated.

From here, it is seen that there's nothing apart from the indivisible, self-shining Awareness, in which all these stories are being dreamed up and known. Simultaneously. In parallel, without the constraints of space and time.

The totality of what can be, and the actuality of it. Emptiness and Fullness.

Here even the self can be done away with, and it can be said that there is no self. But in Advaita Vedanta, on the part of Jnana; the path of knowledge, the sense of being, or the fact that I am, which began the search in the first place, merges into the Understanding.

It is seen that this Awareness is what the sense of being has always been pointing out. The knowledge that I am has never referred to anything other than this intrinsic Awareness. It never really referred to the character in the story.

And this is what is truly I -- The Self.

From the normal human and scientific point of view this Self is literally nothing. Cannot be perceived, cannot be measured, cannot be conceived of in thought or imagination. Just an absolute nothing.

But to the Jnani, to the Self-Realized, only the Self is real.

When what the mind considers to be 'nothing' is seen as Reality, then all that was previously seen as 'real' is seen to be imaginary. Completely without substance.

So, from the Jnani's standpoint, nothing real was ever created, and nothing can ever be destroyed. No illusion was ever projected, and no one was ever deceived.

The Self is Reality, which has always been the same and has never changed in any way. Ajata is a direct way of expressing the Jnani's standpoint, and it will always be baffling until the moment that it isn't.

That will be the moment when 'I' stops referring to the character in the story. It is from outside the context of these stories, cutting through the model of events and individual conscious entities in space and time, that the wisdom teachings converge upon the highest truth.

I will present it here in Sri Ramana Maharshi's translation of Gaudapada.

"There is no creation, no destruction, no bondage, no longing to be freed from bondage, no striving to be free from bondage, nor anyone who has attained freedom from bondage.

Know that this is the ultimate truth."