How can there NOT be dreams? | Why Consciousness Exists [public version]

NSo it might seem obvious that you need eyes to see. But then you consider that at night you see without eyes. Like when you dream, your eyes are closed, there's no external source of light, but you're seeing. So in the same way, you should consider what is really essential to you.

And to this quality of being aware. What is really needed for that? So let's just continue with seeing, with sight. You could look at it the usual way. So even with eyes closed when you're dreaming, the eyes move — there's rapid eye movement. And if you were born blind, you would not even see in your dreams. So there's some relationship between the activity and the seeing. So you could say you need the eyes, you need the optic nerve, you need activity, and then there's seeing.

But even if you don't have the eyes and the optic nerve, and you have the right activity, you could have seeing. So that's the essential component. In the same way, it's the same for all kinds of experience. So if you go for an operation and they put you under, you go into a coma — what is being influenced is just the activity. We're shutting down the activity. So experience depends on the activity.

So to experience, you need the activity. But what do you need to experience the activity? It's a different question. What do you need to experience the activity? Because as soon as the induced coma is going away, the activity appears, immediately it is experienced.

So when we consider the quality of being aware, it should not be confused with the state of being conscious, in which experience is present. Because the quality of being aware encompasses both states of being conscious and unconscious. Otherwise, when the activity appears, it will not be experienced. What is necessary is for there to be the quality of being aware.

And if you see that all that makes up a human mind is what comes later — with the activity — the perceptions, the higher kind of thought, feeling, emotion, whatever, all of it, memories, it comes with the activity, then that quality of being aware does not belong to these, whatever comes later. All of the human stuff, the "my" stuff, the personal stuff, it comes with the activity. But the quality is there first. And can you say that quality belongs to someone else? It's impossible, because you are the one to whom the experience appears.

And with that, your identity cannot be tied to what comes later. There's just no "I" taste in there. You have to be clear on what is the criteria for something to be called "I." That quality of being aware is what makes you you, and nothing that comes in the activity, along with it the experience, has that quality.

So your identity is always, always completely unattached to what comes later. There's no struggle to disentangle and to give up the ego and all that. That's all in the experience. But you are forever the aware factor, the Awareness, which transcends both consciousness and unconsciousness. Experience may depend on the activity.

But if you question what you need to experience, you don't need anything. When a child is born and the experience begins, what are they born with? Who is born? It's just the activity, and the experience begins. But the quality was there first. It did not depend on knowledge.

It did not depend on learning anything. Life begins. The activity and the experience are two sides of the same coin. And to that which is aware, that is how the activity is perceived. That is the direct apperception of what's going on.

Because the activity too is not separate to the Reality in which it appears. And it is Reality itself that is aware. All right, let's go into Q&A. Yes, [unclear].

QSo this was something that was said last week as well, or last time. When a baby is just developing in the mother's womb, at some point experience arises because of its progress. I know you don't like to talk about metaphysics and things like that because it's all speculative — a lot you haven't experienced — but what I wanted to ask is: before the baby has the experience, does the bubble that the baby is born into exist before the baby has the experience?

NYeah. The experience is the baby. The baby is the bubble. It's a baby world.

And that world is experienced by what? That is the true Self. That is the nondual Self. Is there a world that the baby is born into? So when we say world, what do you mean? Is it the experiential world or is it an objective world?

QAn objective world.

NSo for there to be an objective world, we have to take that Reality is objective. We have to take that to be true. But what is objective reality? Even in physics, it's not about objects. It's about fields, universal fields with no fixed objects. So until the experience appears, this is just Reality as a whole.

There's always just Reality as a whole. Even when experience appears and the baby doesn't say "oh, now I am born" — it's just that there's experience. The experience is taking place in that same one Reality. Two years later the thought appears: "I am me, I'm XYZ" — and then that separation is taking place.

That's where memory starts. The identity has taken shape. It takes time after being born for identity to take shape, and then there's a split between me and the rest. Until that point, it was just experience taking place. And all experience takes place in the same Reality, of course. It's not that each bubble world is entirely an island.

QI guess what I'm really asking in my brain is... For example, when my wife was having a baby, there was a kick. So I imagined there was something going on in the baby's brain that made it kick. It may have had an experience of doing something. So at that point, it was in my and the baby's objective world before it had any... sorry, before it had any experience.

Was there an objective world that the baby was in?

NSo, just see — the standpoint you're coming from is not wrong. When you're saying yes, there was experience — there was your experience of the baby's kick, and another experience of the kick as the baby. However, that does not mean there were two separate subjects.

That's where this always goes wrong from this standpoint. There are no separate subjects. There can be many streams of experience in parallel, but they are not being... it's the experience that is coherent and one in a stream. There is your stream and your child's stream, but there's not you and your child as two separate conscious entities.

The objective world — it becomes irrelevant when you see that Reality is always whole. It cannot be split into separate subjects. Then the universe — this universe and all the other universes — are also just variations within the same fundamental Reality. And what we find is the fact that this quality of being aware does not belong to any objects, and not even to any subjects.

It is fundamental to Reality, because whenever experience begins, parallel to the activity which caused it, it must appear within that Reality — based on that quality which does not belong to anything that appears later. It does not negate any of your love for your child, and all that is fine. But you just realize — who you love, who is that? It is not a tiny little child.

The child is the avatar of the Self. And the love is all natural and all correct and all fine. However, once you see your child as a separate little thing, and when things go bad, you have no answer. Your whole world is just rendered miserable.

And that would still happen even with this understanding. But you would see: no one has been born, no one dies. And that makes some difference.

QThank you.

NThank you.

QNow, you talked about the baby experience within the first two years, when a different type of experience comes. So I was reading something from [unclear]. He's saying that somebody asked about experience, and he said pure experience does not bind. Experience that is caught between desire and fear is impure and creates karma. So it's kind of — you can have that pure experience. Somebody was asking him whether experience is bad or good, and he says no, experience does not have to be bad.

But the experience that's not caught between desire and fear, which is kind of the baby's state of bliss — is that similar to the baby's state, within that first two years you were talking about?

NYeah, but there's another side to it. When you read that, it gives the sense that the jnani must always be in joy and so on.

But babies do cry — most of the time they're crying. So experience in itself has the quality that it can be miserable, pleasurable, or painful. That's one quality which is in the experience itself. The baby can feel fear, it can feel pain. But it's actually not the baby feeling it. It is the quality of that experience.

But then as the child grows up and now has an identity — I'm another, I'm a boy from this and that, this is what I am — you start to have opinions about yourself: oh, I did that wrong, or blah blah. Now there's another quality, and that is the quality that is judging each experience as it's happening. And it's getting more and more complicated as you grow up. That is the ego, the self, the small 's' self.

And with that, experience is no longer pure in the sense that it is always being seen from another standpoint — which, to the jnani, is clearly the wrong standpoint. Because who is now this thing which is claiming to be conscious, to be in control, and to be completely separate from Reality, completely separate from the world? Who is that? What can that be? So pure experience is only just all these same experiences without accepting that that is the true identity.

You see that that is not you. The beginning part when we go from deep sleep to waking, or coma to experience appearing — what is there a moment before the experience? That is You. That is I. I do not identify with anything that came later, that is not I.

That is not You. And from that standpoint, every experience is just pure experience. The impurity is then saying, "I am separate to you. I'm separate to the world. And in my own right, I am something that is conscious." Who can make that claim?

QSo if I may, I'll say one more thing. I was basically carrying this question in my mind — why did Consciousness even appear? I listen to a lot of your videos that talk about it. It's nothing coming into existence, it's just a knowing that has appeared and all that. So that was in my mind. And this morning I was reading something for my son, and it was like one of those Nisargadatta — in a few words, he just completely shuts your mind and says, "That's it."

So I just want to say it for you. It says: "For bliss to appear there must be contact. The assertion of unity in duality." That kind of landed — okay, that was it. Can you talk about it a little bit?

NI mean, to Nisargadatta, the actual bliss is what is there when there's no experience.

It's like when that is your identity — where you have no dependencies, no need for anything — that is peace. When experience appears, I have seen it from that identity. I did not need it. I did not ask for it. And the question of why did Consciousness appear — nobody planned it, it wasn't intentional. There's this myth in spiritual circles, like God wanted to be, and so he creates the world and all that.

No. It is a quality of the nature of Reality — that Reality is aware. And so in that Awareness, when certain activities happen, of course they're noticed. It's like you sleeping deeply, and then something starts to happen. You notice it. At first you might notice it in your sleepy state, and then it starts to grab your attention, and then you wake up and so on.

That's life. It's just the nature of Reality that it is aware. And so that answers the question of why Consciousness at all. Of course, in such a Reality, there can be phenomena that Consciousness experiences. And bliss is natural to that kind of Reality, because what is bliss?

When do we feel peace? When we are detached from whatever is going on, and going inwards to that first state — where there's just you, just you being aware, and all the rest is superfluous. It's not when you're thinking about it, depending on it, or needing it to be this way or that way. Then you are back to being at peace.

That state where your Consciousness is here and you are looking at it from that standpoint. That is bliss. That is just unimaginable bliss. You're not attached to it, but you realize your being. You realize the immensity of love. I'm not talking of that more extreme, high kind of experience. The immensity of love and all that pouring out — that cannot be sustained for long. This is just a very natural peace. Even now, some of you will be feeling it, but you don't associate it with what I'm saying. It's just peace.

Peace is when you're not tied into what is happening. Your identity is not tied into that. And that peace is not coming from any of the senses. It's not coming from seeing or hearing or any of that. It's not coming from thinking. It is arising from just being aware and present.

QThank you.

NPi. Is it Pi?

QExcuse me. Brazil here. My first time here. Hey. Let me try one question. If it was your last day here and you were in front of your child, your daughter, and you would just leave her some advice — what would you tell her?

I'm just asking this for you because I love your videos. Your videos are amazing. And my mother — she was, in 10 years, she tried to kill herself, but she's okay now. But this kind of thing of separation — when you say there is no separated entity, for me I understand, but I would like... do you have some very easy way that I can feel less hurt? I mean, the way that my ego still hurts me is when I don't remember that there is no separated entity.

I really don't understand this word — like when I receive a "no" from the world, I know it's not just a "no." Because if someone — I'm single — and someone just doesn't want to kiss me, I'm going to give you an ego example, and I don't feel right because this person is saying no to me. How is the easiest way for me to remember that there is no separate... sorry, I talk a lot. Sorry, I'm very happy.

NYeah, I mean it's all... clarity dawns on you like the sunrise, slowly, as these insights make their way into your mind and clear things up on their own.

And what becomes clear — like what you're saying — is that in your mind a thought says something, and you notice that it is not your thought. It's just a thought. And you start to pinpoint. It becomes very precise. Whenever a thought says "I" or "me," you see clearly through it that that is not referring to you. Because what are you? You are just what is aware.

And that which is aware never speaks. It doesn't think. You don't think. Thoughts arise because you are aware. So the essence is always the question of self-inquiry, which you might phrase in different ways — could be "Who am I?" or "What am I?" It's not that you have to think that question.

Initially you would, but the inquiry, as it becomes clear, then when these thoughts arise and so on, it's just clear. They're not... they're just thoughts, they're just thinking, but they're not actually referring to you who are aware. And then what really makes the difference is some of your thinking has shifted. It is now in the thinking — there is the knowledge that, oh, the one that is aware of me, the thought, is the actual Self.

And that actual Self — who can claim ownership of that in the entire mind? No one dare do that. The mind can only do that when there's confusion — then there's a "me and me alone." Once there's realization that that which is aware is the Self, who would claim that as just me, that's me and nobody else has that power?

QYeah, and when you say that — just one more — when you say that there is no doer, so if there is no doer... I'm going to say something very basic. If I want to go to the — what takes me into the bathroom is my Consciousness. So if you look at it closely, what's actually happening is you are experiencing the thought, you are experiencing the urge. All of it is an experience. Even the decision between "should I, should I not" — that is all experience.

NSo the experiences of decisions being made and things happening and so on, but who is actually doing it? And if you inquire into that, you cannot find who is doing it. It is like we said, the activity — there are two sides. There's the activity and the experience, which is actually the same. You are experiencing the activity, but there's no central orchestrator. There's no one driving the car.

Nobody's home.

QI remember you said there is nobody home.

NYou are the home. In the home, whatever happens, you know it. But there's nobody home to do this and that. It just happens. But if you dwell on it, it only becomes an intellectual question.

The free will and all that — I don't go into that too much. I don't care, because the experience is as if you make a decision. That's the experience. So I'm not saying you don't experience that. I'm saying there is a clear identity that is you, and there is a false identity which seems to be you. And like in the dream, you are doing all this and that, but your actual role is that you have made this dream world possible. It is contained within you.

QWhen you say the dream world — is that like the illusion world?

NWhen I say world, it includes the character, the protagonist — the hero in the world is also part of the world.

QYeah, but I just use this character sometimes when it's useful. That's all. With the desire — if I am desiring someone or some food, I am using the character. That's it.

NYou're not even using it. So all of that should — it happens as it always has.

It's actually the brain that has already been trained. Consciousness has a role in that, to allow that initial baby brain to learn and so on. It's all through experiences. The experiences have some feedback loop, and that's how the brain grows up and so on. You reach a point where you realize, okay, why am I... Because that feedback loop creates all these problems — like we have self-recriminations, or we blame others, or whatever. All the psychological problems.

It's like there should be a point where you realize, okay, the brain's trained, it's done. I'm done. I don't need to train much anymore. Small tweaks may be required — you might still read books and all that — but that process, where it had to analyze everything and try to fix itself and all that... it gets too much. It's not necessary. Now I run on autopilot, because it's good enough. I'm not aiming for perfection in terms of the body and mind.

So the body can operate and the mind can operate as they have learned through all this life. That's fine. And in each step, if we are interested in Self-inquiry, the only thing to be clear about is: what is your true identity, what is your true role — and whoever you're interacting with, who are they actually?

QOkay, thank you so much, Nabeel. Such an honor.

NThank you. [unclear].

QThank you so much, Nabeel. I don't know how to explain this question. When you see the three states — you can say these are states of the mind — the waking state, the dream state, and the deep sleep state. In the waking state there are many objects, and there is Awareness and Consciousness of objects and experiences. In the dream state, this world appears in your Awareness, and you create all of this. You create a person, you create other persons. And in the deep sleep state there is nothing. Some people say there is absence of Awareness, but it seems that there is Awareness of absence. There is nothing, no object, and yet it is not a state where you can realise that you are this Awareness. So it has to be realised in the waking state. And as Ramana Maharshi is telling us: be asleep while you are awake. So how can this deep sleep state be brought into the waking state — with all the perceiving of these objects, and with all these experiences that are bringing you to being this self that you are not?

I don't know if I have said it in the right way, but yeah, that's it.

NTo be asleep while awake — that is a brilliant way to describe it. You are always in deep sleep. When the dream appears, where does it appear?

When experience appears — what is called waking up appears — where does it appear? It appears in deep sleep. Who can say the sleep has ended? And there are no actual objects here. There never were any objects.

Any object, if you try to just look at it and contemplate — there's no object. It is not a separate object. It is the experiencing itself. And what is seen? You're not seeing an actual object. There is seeing — that's it. There's seeing the light, the shape, and all that. Those are qualities of seeing, not of an actual object.

Even touch. Touch, where you feel this must be a real object because I'm touching it — it is just the qualities of touch. So in the Jnani's view there's no object, never any objects, and any talk of an objective world is entirely in thought — it's conceptual. The world is not objective as it is given to you. The world is entirely subjective. So the question then becomes: what is the subject? That is the basis of the world. What is the subject?

And the subject cannot be a thing in the world, because it's entirely subjective. So then the question is: where did this world originate? And it always originates in what is called unconsciousness, deep sleep, the absence of Awareness. That is I.

That is what is actually I. And that is why it never lands on a usual mind — the normal kind of mind — because it is what the mind associates with death, and not self, not existing. That is the Self, because the Self transcends inexistence and existence, being and non-being. It's beyond time. When you take time to be the base Reality, then there are people being born, babies born. They have lives, they die.

That is taking time to be the base Reality — time and space. Then there are objects. There are separate little subjects with their lives. But time and space are entirely subjective. The first moment of time is when experience appears. Time and experience are coterminous — they begin together, they end together.

And even in science, time is not the base Reality. We know that. So the Self is always asleep, and in that there are all these dreams. I — the actual I — can have any number of dreams in parallel. There's no... because Awareness is simply the capacity, infinite capacity.

QYeah. I remember Muji once said it's like two eyes floating in space. But when you said that, it was so deep — I felt it so deep — when, in the last Satsang, I looked... or one of your Satsangs, when you said to someone, Awareness only — perceiving is only... It has the quality of only being aware and nothing else. So that is the only quality. It's like a truism — that's what Awareness is. It only has the quality of being aware. So then there's no difference between conscious and unconscious. It does not negate that Awareness is present.

If there's no experience, well, who can say there's no Awareness? But when experience appears, that proves Awareness is present, and it's appearing again and again. It's not about one life. You can... that's what the world proves, because if you see life everywhere, even through the subjective world you can see there are other subjective worlds — it's happening again and again. What is allowing that to happen is Awareness, and that is the Self.

So it hits in two ways. One is at the level of the mind: the realization that there is no specific thing that I can say is me, there's no me — that's the no-self. And then the realization of what is actually Self has nothing to do with me, has nothing to do with this life — but also everything to do with this life, because this life is not possible without the Self. But it is universal. It is absolute.

NYes.

QThank you so much.

NThank you, [unclear].

QHi. Oh, wow, some of those pointers there. Yeah, when doing inquiry into some of the really strong reactions, when there's this fight or flight response, like my heart beating so fast, it becomes much less of an intellectual exercise and there's really just sensation that can be perceived, but there's still just a tendency to contract. It's as though this big shift is going on. Where do you go with that when you try and...

Yeah, I'm not sure I have a question. It's like the combination between sensation and doing inquiry into that. Does that make sense? Can you... when most of your experience is just sensation moving, and when you're trying to use inquiry but it's just a...

NI mean, so inquiry can be quite subtle, and you don't need to force it.

If at some moment there is only sensation, then there's no inquiry. But if, as the sensation is happening, the inquiry appears — "What am I?" — it's actually quite brilliant that there's only some very specific experience, because it becomes quite clear. Because there is just the sensation, and no separate thing that can be you. You are, in that moment, quite clearly just that aware presence.

That's always what you are. You are what is present and aware, and any other concept of you is a concept. You say "I'm a body," or "I'm a person," or "I'm a mind," a conscious entity — those require thinking in conceptual terms. But as you are in the moment, no matter what is going on, it might be very basic raw experience, or it could be a very extreme high.

You are what is present and aware, and that is why you can be called Awareness. That is truly your quality. Ramana Maharshi said Awareness is another name for you. It's just another term to describe you.

It's a more accurate term than... you know, when we grow up and the teachers in school, we are given all this and that, and all these different systems: the nervous system, the circulatory system, and so on. How can that be you? This is the actual definition of you, as directly available to you. But there's an apparent resistance and subtle rejection of experience, when it gets to a point where...

Yeah, we're losing you halfway there. But see — who rejects? Does Awareness reject an experience by labeling it discomfort or something?

QSorry, you cut off there a bit.

NYeah. So you can inquire into who is rejecting the experience. Who is resisting? There's actually no one. The resistance comes from wrong thinking.

And there's also wrong thinking about "I should be perfectly fine with certain experiences." Certain experiences are lousy. If you touch a hot stove, it hurts. It's never going to feel good. Same with depression. If there's a chemical imbalance, if there's depression, it's not going to feel nice.

But then the judgment of it can go any way. So once you have understood all this, the judgment becomes, "Oh, I've realised all this and I should be beyond this, and I should feel good even despite depression, or I should overcome this depressive thought," and so on. But that is the nature, the quality of that experience arising. And now the judgment is a bit more subtle, a bit more strange — now it's judging not as "this experience is bad," but that I should somehow be completely impervious to this experience.

So that resistance is also coming from the wrong idea of "I." Because even if my mind still has these chemical imbalances or whatever, it goes up and down — that's fine. It's not unnatural if eventually something happens, like Alzheimer's or any of the kinds of things that can happen to this chemical apparatus. Those will happen. That does not change the truth. The truth is always true — it's not just about what's going on in this stream of experience.

And so resisting it is just wrong thinking. You are, and Awareness allows for all experience. Awareness will never say no. A thought might say no.

The scream might be in the experience, and that's fine. Then we scream.

QThank you. Thanks.

NAngela.

QHi, Nabeel.

NHi.

QI have two questions. I think the first one's pretty short. Is the dream — the dream when we're asleep, that dream which is made only of dream stuff — that dream stuff is also Consciousness, right? It's just Consciousness dreaming that it's dreaming, kind of thing.

NDream. What are dreams made of?

They're dream stuff — that's just Consciousness. And then when you open your eyes and wake up, you're in a dream still, of Consciousness. All of this is Consciousness.

QSo my other question that I seem to be stuck on in my mind is: when I ask myself if I'm aware of everything, the answer is yes.

I, as Awareness, am aware of everything, and then I look to see if there's any other Awareness anywhere around, and of course I can't find another one, leading to the conclusion that there is only one. And then my mind says, "But what about other people?" Part of me thinks that perhaps other people are like my body — just made out of Consciousness, made out of feeling and seeing and all that stuff. But I think potentially that objects that are sentient also... anyway, you can maybe help me with this. I think you know where I'm going.

NYeah, it's just again being clear of what "I" means. If you are what is, if you are the Awareness, then you have realized that no object is conscious. There are no sentient objects, because you're not an object.

QOkay. That's where I was stuck. I got it.

NAnd then what are other people? Well, other people are just thinking in terms of objects being conscious. Even a subject is an object. A separate subject would be an object in a wider universe.

But what you're finding is you are not a specific thing that is conscious. You're not actually a subject. You are the space of subjectivity. And in any moment, in the space of subjectivity, if you focus on what's here — that here-now moment — if you inspect it, it's something specific. And that specific is not sentient. The specific is the phenomena.

The Noumenon is what is conscious, and that Noumenon is not specific. So it cannot be split into separate persons, separate subjects.

QSo if I'm looking at another person right now... am I just seeing — I guess the other people are just made out of dream stuff, Consciousness?

NWhat you're seeing is not a person. It's just a face. It's just light. You never see a person. There's no actual thing that can be called a person. Person was entirely conceptual.

What was real was the space of Awareness, subjectivity. And wherever there is experience, it must be in the same space. And that space is I. And so where this could go wrong is in the mind. The mind claims, "I am aware, and all else we don't know — maybe there are no others." But that's taking Awareness as yours.

QGot it. The light bulb has gone off. Thank you. Or on. Sorry. Thank you.

NAnd I think Liam next.

QCan you hear me?

NIt's a bit low. Your voice is a bit low.

QI come closer to the phone. I can't manage to get on the laptop. It just won't work for me. Anyway, thank you Nabeel, and thanks for all the questions and the contributions there. I suppose I try to make this as simple as I can, you know, and just Angela was speaking about this notion of the separate self.

I find that I try to be conscious of the fact that everything is happening — as I say, you know, from the scriptures it says "according to his will" — that it's all happening as per the All and the God which is Awareness. It's all happening as per that will, that's the way I think of it, and it's being done unto me according to that will, whatever I'm doing — if I'm splitting a bit of wood or whatever, I'm just very conscious that all of this is happening through this particular psychosomatic apparatus, as Nisargadatta mentioned. You used the word "apperception" as well there, which is a very unusual word, and I know Nabeel used it too. I find that if I'm out of tune with the Awareness, then I'm not in flow really.

I know Nisargadatta mentioned the fact — and I scribbled a few lines myself in terms of poems — that he stopped writing poetry because he wanted to concentrate more on the Absolute. And yet at the same time we have Rumi writing poems and things like that. There seem to be a lot of contradictions in the whole school of Advaita Vedanta, you know. But I find that in Christianity there's a lot of nondual teaching in it — "I and my Father are one," as he used to say.

But there are a lot of little nuggets that have been hidden from us — "ye are gods and sons of gods" and so on. I'm finding these and unearthing them. I'm not into religion myself, religiosity, ritual, or anything like that. But at the same time I'm trying to allow the understanding to filter through and to work itself into my daily living and in my relationships.

And it also means that because it's all Awareness and it's all happening and there's nobody responsible for anything, everybody — all these entities — are evolving in their own way.

NI think somebody has their speaker unmuted and there's a lot of interference in the background.

QThank you.

NYou mentioned Nisargadatta stopping writing poetry because his guru told him to stop.

It sounds like a contradiction, because who is writing poetry... But it is like in the dream where you thought you are the character in the dream. Another character is trying to tell you something, and you think they're trying to tell you something, but actually it is to — in that dream — somehow go beyond the dream, for the basis of the dream, to realize, "Oh, this is a dream." So all these weird things happen.

Thank you for sharing. Rohan, you still have your hand up. Did you want to say anything?

QNo, my mistake.

NOh, no worries. All right, Leslie.

QGood morning, Nabeel. Yesterday I went for a long walk in our national park, and as part of my walk it's like a walking meditation where I'm trying to keep my thoughts out a bit and just be aware as I'm walking — the crunching of the footsteps and the birds in the trees. But at the same time I'm really conscious of all these thoughts going through my brain, like a train of thoughts. Then at some point this thought came in: "The woman is walking on the path."

And then everything just quieted down, because there was a woman walking on the path — it wasn't me walking on the path. "The woman is walking in the forest" — that thought was sort of like the overlaying thought: the woman is there. But with that thought, the experience changed. The trees seemed to rise out of the ground — they weren't just there — and the birdsong became infused into the air.

So what I'm getting to is this change of Awareness, of experience. It was all in the same place, at the same time, doing the same thing, but the experience was totally different. There were two different experiences for the person doing the same thing in the park. So what's happening there?

Is it my brain thinking differently about things? or what?

NSo the way I describe it is that it is not the experiences being different, but the standpoint has shifted. It's a different standpoint.

You are not taking yourself to be the woman. As long as you're walking there as you being the woman walking, it's that human experience. And when you change your standpoint and you're not that, then you could say the experience has changed, but nothing has changed. It's still the same bird, the same gravel sound. Your standpoint has fundamentally changed.

You have lost all the baggage which creates the misery, creates the mental noise, which is unnecessary because it's based on a mistaken identity. That's all. That's why it's said giving up the self is not the way it's imagined. It's not annihilation in the sense the mind imagines it. It's very simple. You're just stepping back and being aware, which is what you are.

As it's said in the Ashtavakra Gita, "Liberation is to know yourself as Awareness alone." So in that moment you were not identified with all the other stuff. You were just Awareness alone, and that's the view through which you saw the world.

QAnd it was a very nice feeling indeed. Yes.

NBut the only thing is we don't expect it to always be nice, because even as Awareness alone I can experience all kinds of horrors, and problems with the body, and emotional trauma and all that — but as Awareness alone it is different than identifying as a person experiencing.

But again, it's about the standpoint and not the actual experience.

QSo the thought that came up — that the woman was walking — that was like a little key, like a trigger. It separated the standpoint. The thought would have come from the mind still, wouldn't it?

NSo the thought came when the standpoint had already shifted.

Because it's now describing a thing in the world which is not you. So somehow you had already stepped back. And that "somehow" is just the way to do it intentionally — through self-inquiry, and just being clear what the Self is. Because then when the wrong thoughts arise, it's just, "Oh, that's not I." If it says "I am blah blah blah" — well, that's not what is meant by I.

What is meant by I is simply aware, present, real.

QThank you.

NHello. Oh, sorry. Sorry. Okay, you can go first then, [unclear].

QSorry. It's okay. Cisco, you should go first.

QSure. Yeah.

Okay. All right, Nabeel, what I wanted to run by you is how I see everything from two points — from the relative perspective and from the absolute perspective. From the relative perspective, the experience that I call Cisco — I'm not talking about the body, nor even the body-mind, all of it — that is what I will call Cisco. This experience appears as a result of limitations on the scope of Consciousness. It is made by Consciousness — my entire experience. So it's not different from Consciousness, and it only appears to be different because of a limitation on viewpoint.

It's like seeing things through a window. You don't see the entire thing, and so that will be my experience. It occurs, from that perspective, that there appears a subject — which is the "I" that you cannot describe, that there is no... it's just pure Awareness. And then on the other hand there appears the object, which will be that experience as the totality — that is from the relative point of view. But that relative point of view is not true, is limited, and therefore not true. From the absolute perspective, there is no subject, there is no object, and there is only Awareness. And from that perspective, what I call Cisco is all of it — Awareness, only Awareness — the same Awareness that is the subject that is supposedly experiencing Cisco.

So therefore there is neither subject nor object as a separation. When you interpret it like that, then it seems to me like it is possible to start seeing, from the relative perspective, the absolute perspective. You see what I'm saying? In other words, where you are — from the perspective where you are living — be aware that none of it is separated. Whatever you are seeing, whatever you are experiencing, is you, in the same way as the totality. So any part of your experience, no matter how tiny, is the totality.

By "you" I'm talking about — you know, the Reality — that is you. What do you think? Do you feel that is not how you see it, or do you see that way?

NYeah, I mean, it's the ultimate realization — it is nonduality. So yes, everything that could be called Cisco turns out to be not anything different than the nondual Reality. It's Awareness — this is all there is. Awareness without any coloring, or anything — it's just Awareness, indescribable.

You cannot really describe it in itself, other than by putting the limitation of thinking, or words, or concepts, et cetera. That's the only way that you can describe it — by, consider, boxing it. You know, you box it and then you can describe things, but otherwise it is indescribable. You cannot describe it at all. Yeah. So every experience is actually ineffable. You can't describe a color. That ineffable nature is of Awareness. We have given it a name and a color, and since it's the same apparatus replicated, we can talk about it. However, the color remains ineffable. That ineffable nature is the nature of Awareness. Unknowable. The unknowable, undefinable.

However, the unknowable is known. Yeah, we can go around in circles there. But yeah, that's the nature of Reality.

QYeah, it's interesting — because you can enjoy the limitation of, for example, seeing colors. You don't see all colors. If you had all colors they would be white, or not even something that you can perceive, et cetera. So you can enjoy limitations which in Reality are not there.

They are just the nature of this relative view that we have. But at the same time, realizing that everything that you are seeing — which is limited — still contains the totality. It still is the totality. There is no difference between your current experience and the totality. It's all the same, because you are the one — you as Awareness — that is what you're seeing, what you're experiencing. Everything that you touch, see, hear — all of it is you. That's it. There is no difference between that and you. None. The subject and the experience are always one. Only when Thought and conceptualization arise do we separate them in order to understand, et cetera. And then we label it and kind of make cuts — little cuts in Reality — and play the game with it. But if we cut that, there is no difference. Would you agree?

NYeah, but there's a verse from Rumi that comes to mind. It says, "Why are all these creatures bubbling up in joy [delight]?" Why is life all bursting up out of this earth? And he says, "Because a single drop from your wine has dropped here."

So he's meaning a single drop of — to him — what is divine Awareness has dropped on this earth, and all these creatures are bubbling up. The colors a bird can see are beyond what a human eye and mind can process. They can see in the ultraviolet range, so there are colors you will never experience in this life, cannot imagine, which are there. It's a single drop of Awareness.

This whole world and all its — already this world itself is an infinitude of experiences. In music, how much variance can just that one stream of experience have? So each moment of experience is somehow in itself ineffable, containing and demonstrating the infinity, while being only a little sample. And that little sample is enough. That little sample is defining the totality.

So what you're seeing is the whole in the specific.

QYes, totally agree. Thank you.

QHi, good afternoon everyone. So it's sort of funny you brought up Rumi and this ineffability issue, because this is something that has been bugging me in the last few weeks.

To lay some groundwork for this — there are times when there will be just sudden silence. Often I'm meditating or inquiring, and everything just settles, sits quiet. It feels like something behind me is looking through me. Once I come out of this, it looks like something behind me was there — like I was a lens or something, like an optical lens. Something is seeing through me. It's like that just happened. It seems like I'm a lens through which something is getting seen, and all this stuff gets seen.

Every time this happens, I come to this question you just brought up with that Rumi comment — which I didn't find satisfying, by the way. I find it poetic and lovely, but not quite satisfying. The question is this: why did this silence even want to do all this? Why is the silence using me as a lens to see all this stuff? What's the point of it? What was the need for the silence to do this?

It could have just sat in silence and everything would be fine. There would be no possibility of me taking this life personally, identifying with myself, and going through all the grief and happiness and grief. If everything was just silence and there was no lens — why did this thing have to make a lens? What was the point of this? Why do this? Just relax, man. Just be in this quietness. Why did the quietness have to go through the lens? It's just bothering me. Why did this have to happen?

You brought up your Rumi answer, but then you said, "Well, let's just drop it." So it's like, okay, fine, it's lovely, it sounds great. But why?

NYeah. I'll work with Rumi. So look, he didn't say that you dropped by intention. It just spilled over.

The cup was brimming to the top. It was too full — one drop, and it just happens by chance. That's pretty, when you think of it... No, just hold on. When you think in terms of wanting — when was the first point you had an intentional want and desire? It was at that two or three-year-old stage, when children start to stamp their foot and say "I want this."

Before that there was no intentional wanting. The baby cries when the baby cries — there is a kind of want to it, but it's not planned and intentional. In the sense that later on, the mind is taking that as how things work.

So even this appearance of Consciousness, and life behind it — there's some intention, some somebody who architected it, and so on. But it's not like that, is it? So when it's not like that, what Rumi is describing is that Reality was bursting with this quality of being aware. The Awareness was there. And what happened?

It bursts into all this life — all the life on this planet burst from that, because it had this quality. When life begins, in that evolution — why did it explode into all these species? Scientists are still scratching their heads. Why? Well, what does evolution use? It uses pain and pleasure as the drivers for all these animals. What does that require?

It requires Consciousness. Without that, the prodding doesn't work. Richard Dawkins — he was quite influential on me when I was a theist, to turn me into an atheist. But he also has a blind spot. He describes the evolution of the eye. Theists can't imagine it — they say, "Oh, the eye must be designed." So he describes how a true evolution of the eye could occur.

QWhen you say "I," you mean the letter I, the I?

NNo, no — the E-Y-E. The eye. E-Y-E.

QYeah. Yeah.

NSo he describes it as initially there was just a cell with a depression, and there would be some light sensitivity, and from that he carries on to how it evolves.

QSure, okay.

NBut light sensitivity has to then lead to an action — going this way or that way. You could explain it entirely in terms of mutation, happy mutation. However, within that one life, before it is time for the next mutation, some different behavior is taking place.

That behavior requires the experience of light or no light. Consciousness is very deeply entwined with life. Life has made use of it. It was not Consciousness that said "let there be life" — there was Consciousness, and life is using it. Anyway, that's getting a bit conceptual, but the point is: there's no intention, there's no design behind this.

Silence did not say "let there be sound," or God did not say "let there be light." But there is a spontaneous... it's overflowing with this sort of exciting madness or something. Because it's the nature of Reality that it is aware. So when you have a Reality that is infinite, timeless, and aware, eventually there will be experience.

Infinite, timeless, aware. How can there not be dreams?

QYeah. But I like that comment about it just having nowhere to go. It's just overflowing. Some drop has to spill. What are you going to do? I like that angle.

NYeah.

Every time a drop spills, it's a new universe.

QYeah, it's not just this is one life — it's the base Reality before the universe. Why is there anything? And it's just insanely fascinating how when I go to sleep, this whole thing goes back and it's just gone. This whole universe, whatever that is, is gone.

There's nothing — no time, no space, no experience, no sun, no nothing. You wake up, it comes back, and it's just this incredible power that it has. It seems this thing has the power to just make it all up in one flash of a moment, and then it all gets sucked back in or something like this. It just gives you goosebumps — chilling, in a way.

NSo from that standpoint, you ask: can I differentiate between that and the state before the big bang? And you can't. So then when you feel like you are the lens and something else is using you, you should question that again. You cannot be the lens.

QCan you please repeat that?

NSo you are the one who has known this state of what is prior to the big bang. There's no difference between that and prior to the big bang. No time, no space, nothing.

You know that. So how can you be something secondary, like a lens that is being used by the Self?

QThere was a point where, as I was doing my inquiry, I had negated everything as not me. But there remained some kind of point here.

NYeah, you shrink to: okay, I'm something at this point, behind all this, and all this is not me — but this one tiny point is left.

QYeah, I see what you mean.

NYou are what is aware. You cannot be the lens. Thank you. All right, last question. Okay.

QYeah, I know we don't have much time. I was just going to ask you about desire — or just desire, or sexual desire. Can I consider desire just as a thought or an emotion? So it's not me. The thing is, sexual desire — or simple desire — it's strong in me, and I know it's something strong in friends that I talk to.

Can I... it's okay to say that Awareness is not the thoughts, not the emotions, so I can say that sexual desire or desire is something like a thought, like an emotion — or is it another thing? Anyway, desire is something that is sometimes so strong that makes me think that it's me. But it's not. And at the same time, there are some views in the world that say that anger and other things — like sexual desire — can be used to put this energy into something productive, like work. To use this energy.

I know you don't talk about energy, but do you think there is some way of transmuting this? And it's just these two questions: if desire is like a thought, like an emotion, and if we can transmute it to another thing.

NYeah, it's a bit of what in Buddhism they would call a mental formation. So it's a combination of a few things. There's the thought behind it, the emotion, and the urge — which can be quite animal. It's built into the body.

So overcoming desire... in some of the texts I've read, they go quite hard on that. To me, it's just seeing what your role is. Are you the one desiring, or is the desire arising? And with that little bit of distance, you can then be more clear about what needs to happen. The mind has a bit of space. Whereas if you're consumed by desire, that can go quite wrong. The desire can cause harm and all that.

That's when we're consumed by desire — you're just an animal then. You're letting the animal part take over. Because the jnani's view is you must always be clear of what the Self is.

QYeah. And at the same time, do you think it's possible to change feelings like anger into something productive, or is this not a subject for Awareness?

NIf you try to do it with intention, with control, it doesn't work. However, if you simply shift your standpoint, it just happens. If you do what Lesley was describing, that's the shifting of the standpoint. When you are angry and it's personal — somebody made you angry, it's raw, it's you — then the anger is very gripping.

However, as soon as you take a little step back and the anger is arising and you're aware of it, then there's a space for the mind to go in a different direction. So it's only about focusing on the standpoint. What is my standpoint? Am I the one who is angry?

Am I the one who was wronged? Is that a real person that I have to take my revenge over? Or no — actually, all I am is Awareness, and all that over there, whoever is experiencing, all they are is the same. And then that changes the whole context.

QOkay. Thank you, Nabeel. Such a pleasure. Such an honor. An honor from you.

NThank you all. Cheers. We'll end there for today. Thank you very much.