Non Duality - The Space behind Closed Eyes

 

Non Duality - The Space behind Closed Eyes
By Untangle your Mind.

 

Have you ever had the experience of walking or driving through a thick fog? 
There is a sense that just about anything could appear out of it.  A truck bearing down on you, or maybe a dragon.  Your rational mind might say that is improbable but there is another part of your mind which knows that anything could bear out of this fog which is a space of possibility.

 

Now close your eyes for a moment and look at the space there.  Technically you are looking at the space at the back of your eyelids.  The space that you are seeing has a depth to it that is far greater than the distance between your eyeballs and your eyelids.  In fact you can't really say how big the space is.  There is no boundary, anything could appear here.  A little butterfly, or a wide open landscape or even an entire galaxy.  Anything can fit in this space that you are looking at.  And that is not just because these are optical illusions; it is because the space has the capacity to contain anything. 

 

Now with your eyes open, the world that appears, all the colours and shapes, brightness is all appearing in the same space.  If you blink slowly and just focus on this space you will notice that it is the same space being filled with light, with colour and shapes, all these things are appearing in this space,  the whole world.  And this actually shows us that when we talk about physical space with its three dimensions, it’s really a subset of what we are seeing here.  Because colours are a dimension here, brightness and those are just the visual ones.  When you hear a sound it appears in the same space. Sensations even your most intimate experiences such as emotions, thoughts, memories, all of these are appearing in this one space.  It is not like there are different kinds of spaces that you have access to, there is just one container.  

 

And as you go to sleep at night you are staring into the same space, then you drift off and then the next thing you know you are in a dream and then of course the dream too appears right here.  So at this point it is not quite right to call it space anymore.  It is not three dimensional, it has infinite dimensions, infinite possibilities.  This is a space of consciousness that is what the word means.  You are very familiar with it; it is only when we get academic or philosophical or when someone tries to point out the great mystery of it that it gets a bit confusing. 

Consciousness is most natural to you but shouldn't be taken for granted.   What you are witnessing is infinity and within that infinity is a stream of experience which you call my life but at the same time there are countless other lives being lived in this very same space of consciousness, nobody can claim to own it, the scale is too vast.  And yet you make the mistake of claiming a portion of it for ourselves.  My consciousness, my mind, very much like my piece of land but in reality no such boundaries ever exist they are only mental.   Say that you are dreaming and there is someone in bed with you that notices that you are dreaming they look upon you.  The space upon which the dream appears is no different in nature to the space in which you are seen by this other person.  It is the very same space, only there are two distinct streams of experience in it and those streams exist simultaneously in parallel.  They are distinct but not entirely separate as they are contained in the one space of consciousness.  So the aim here for now is to make this distinction between what consciousness is and what these minds which are really just streams of experience are.  Both can be many but what we are interested in is that nature of consciousness itself.  What is your relationship to it?

 

All that we have talked about is a state of consciousness in which there is some experience but you know that there is a state where experience is completely absent.  And generally this is called unconsciousness.  But consider your own experience of waking up from deep sleep or if you have been unfortunate enough to have to go through an operation where you had to take general anesthesia, that is a very enlightening experience if you look at it the right way.  Or if you come to this as a meditator who has undergone cessation the complete falling apart of experience, well you can refer to that as you think about this.  Try to understand the insight here.  See when you wake up from sleep or from any of those other states and the very first experience appears, just before that is what is called unconsciousness, but if that state really was unconsciousness, there would be no possibility of that experience being noticed or being known.  It would not be an experience at all.  So there is consciousness there, present to render that experience.  And it’s not really there in the form of a state and at this  point we can't even call it space.  There is no space; there is no sense of time at that point.  The only presence at that time is you.  You are there to take receipt of that first experience.  And so what you are is consciousness in its purest form, when it is formless and even to talk about it as space is meaningless.  There is no change so there is no sense in talking about time.  Pure consciousness before the advent of experience and when experience does appear it appears to you - the sentience that has the capacity to perceive whatever appears in the realm of consciousness.  So I fear we have gone too far in this one video so just bring it back a bit and during your day blink a little slower sometimes, notice that space behind closed eyes and as you lie down for sleep if you are in a nice dark room try open your eyes and closing them and seeing if there is any difference in the space you are looking upon.  You will find that there is none. 

So notice the space, it will reveal many secrets to you.

https://youtu.be/Ov85lPY6W2s?si=GpLywUi1GhxkHi0m

Transcribing these talks is considered my sanity project.  So grateful.