Be the witness — you are I AM
I have presented the following quote before in this blog. It represents my belief that I am neither my body, nor its personality. I am the witness to what I call the me of the body. I am the witness to my own existence.
"I am not my body, nor do I need it. I am the witness only. I have no shape of my own. You are so accustomed to think of yourself as bodies having consciousness that you just cannot imagine consciousness as having bodies. Once you realize that bodily existence is but a state of mind, a movement in consciousness, that the ocean of consciousness is infinite and eternal, and that, when in touch with consciousness, you are the witness only, you will be able to withdraw beyond consciousness altogether." NISARGADATTA MAHARAJ (1897-1981)
In my view, there is consciousness and nothing else. As the witness to the me of the body, I see myself as consciousness expressing existence. I am movement in consciousness manifesting thoughts of separation as existence. I am the dancing that is the dance.
Consciousness is the emptiness that is nowhere. The eternal field of infinite possibility. Consciousness is totality. Whole, complete, perfect. Nothing can be added or removed. Consciousness is unchanging, absolute, eternal. There is neither beginning, nor ending. Consciousness has no distinctions. It cannot be described. It cannot be named. Words do not know consciousness. Consciousness cannot be said. There are no words to say the unknowable, but we try.
I like to think that consciousness is intelligent and aware. Intelligence and awareness are human constructs that help to describe the mystery of consciousness. On some unfathomable scale, consciousness not only conceives but recognizes its conceptions. That is, it has thoughts and knows it. Our existence as a universe is a manifestation of its thought of separation. Its awareness of our existence can be called I AM. I AM, then, would be consciousness-expressing. I believe that you and I are consciousness-expressing. We are the whole of the all that is consciousness manifesting existence.
Consciousness itself does not exist. It is not an entity as are objects in the universe. It has no distinctions or being. Although it is not an entity, consciousness must be mindful somehow of its reality and be aware of its infinite possibilities. These possibilities cannot be separated from consciousness. It is undividable totality. Consciousness has no parts or pieces. In its wholeness, there is nothing to add or subtract. It is changeless and absolute. What arises in consciousness as possibility cannot leave consciousness, much like wetness cannot leave water, nor dancing leave the dancer.
Existence is illusion that does not leave consciousness. Consciousness is aware of the illusion like a child is aware of unicorns. I AM is its awareness of existence. Here again we have words attempting to describe the indescribable. I AM is a useful construct to indicate awareness but falls short of the reality it portrays. If I AM is awareness in consciousness, then we are discrete awareness. We are to awareness what molecules are to water. Molecules are the water. We are I AM. There is no other. You are that which I AM.
Consciousness does not exist, but it is aware of its nature. The nature of consciousness eludes us. We discuss it anyway in our desire to understand the mystery of our existence. This need to understand leads to basic existential questions: Who am I? What am I? Where am I? When did it all happen? Why did it happen? How did it happen?. These questions are the foundation of the world’s philosophies, religions, and sciences. They are explored in literature and the arts. Answers develop, expand, change, and dissolve over time. Their truths are transitory, as is the world in which we search for our origins, meaning, and purpose.
I describe the nature of consciousness as reality; reality as opposed to existence. To be real is to be whole, perfect, complete, unchangeable, absolute, eternal. Existence is always forming. It has beginnings and endings. It is transitory. Existence as we know it is the universe, which is always in flux. Our world is not real. We are experiencing an illusion within reality like unicorns in a child’s dream.
I think of our existence as a dream of separation within consciousness. In the eternal field of infinite possibilities, thoughts of separation grow. Separation is a thought in consciousness that cannot become real, no more than the child’s unicorn can become real. There is no this and that in reality. Separations are left to the world of illusion in which we live.
The manifestation of separation in consciousness is existence. We know existence as the universe. We exist in the universe as the me of the body, a personality in form that is not real. Its nature is transitory. It has a beginning and ending. In between birth and death, it changes constantly. It is not permanent. Reality is permanent. Reality is whole, complete, perfect, eternal, unchanging, absolute. The me of the body is not. I am not my body nor its personality. I am the witness to existence. I am that which I AM, or twia. There is no other than I AM.