The Nondual Self

What are you in the absence of experience?

If you think of something, what exactly is that 'something'? If you think nothing, what exactly is that 'nothing'?

If you have pondered over questions like, "What is real?" "Who am I?" "What is the self?"

If such questions stir something deep in you, consider this one:

What are you in the absence of experience?

If the answer that comes to you is this brain or body, what are those in the complete complete absence of experience?

Just dead matter.

And what is 'matter' but a concept to explain this world that you have come to know through experience. This answer is insufficient and invalid.

So, what are you in the absence of experience?

If the answer that comes to you is nothing, what exactly do you mean by that? Isn't that just a placeholder for not having an answer? A mental blind spot.

Think about it.

Then see that thinking cannot give you an answer.

Look carefully.

Then see that looking cannot show you the answer.

With just one simple question, the mind has run out of words. It has nothing to say.

Finally.

Now stay put here - at this point where no knowledge, no concepts, no opposites or dualities apply.

What are you in the absence of experience?

The answer can only come from observing that transition from 'nothing' to 'something'. From the absence of experience to its presence. From deep sleep to waking, stillness to movement, cessation to perception.

When you wake up from sleep on a good day, when there's nothing much to do or think about, and you lay down there for a while more and start drifting between sleep and wakefulness, what exactly are you drifting in and out of?

There are the two states of wakefulness and sleep; something and nothing, but as you drift between them, they're not really two. The only point to differentiate these two states is perception. The presence or absence of experience.

But even in that absence, the capacity to perceive is present.

You are present.

'Something' has appeared out of 'nothing'. From deep sleep to waking, from stillness to movement, from cessation to perception, from the complete absence of experience to its sudden presence.

But can experience create anything anew? Can it create you?

If it can, then you die and get reborn every time this transition takes place. But there's nothing so drastic happening, is there?

What rises and subsides is only experience, and not you.

What you are in the absence of experience, is precisely what you are in its presence as well.

Just try this now: Blink slower. Pause with the eyes closed a moment longer. Then open them and blink again.

Do you see the world appear and disappear?

This transition is taking place with every experience. With every sound, every sensation, every thought or feeling, movement is arising out of Stillness. Something is appearing out of Nothing.

Creation is not something that took place long ago.

Creation is ever in the moment, taking place right now!

Forms arise out of Emptiness. And the forms which arise are the Emptiness. And Emptiness itself is none other than these forms.

Something can arise out of Nothing because there is no duality between the two. They are one and the same. It is simply a transition.

The same natural transition as drifting from sleeping to waking, from stillness to movement, cessation to perception, the absence of experience to its presence.

So, what are you in the absence of experience?

Precisely what you are in the presence of it!

You who know this transition, are what allows for this transition; make it possible.

If movement is not known, it is no different to stillness. If something is never perceived, it is the same as nothing.

Beyond the concepts of something and nothing, being and nonbeing, creation and destruction, is This — The nature of Reality and the Nondual Self. The fundamental Factor that stands firm throughout all states and transitions.

A timeless, infinite Capacity, that allows for anything and everything to arise.

That is what You are.

The Non-dual Self.

Pure Presence.

Absolute, all-encompassing Awareness.