What if there were no more questions?
What if tomorrow you woke as Gregor Samsa, but instead of being transformed into an insect, something entirely different occurred?
What if there were no more questions? Try as you might they will not come. All of your questions about enlightenment, all of your questions about god, and all of your questions about inner peace are completely wiped out. No doubt remains about anything.
Of course, that also means there are no definitive answers, either. If there are no answers, there are no questions.
So there you are, lying in bed staring at the ceiling. There are no questions and no answers.
What happens next?
(I received an e-mail a few minutes ago with this very question. This is very important to see for yourselves, so I will not lead you in any way. Post your own discoveries in the comments, and we will take it from there.
Also, I will no longer append your replies to the post itself. Instead, I will just quote and reply using comments. Now that I have the subscribe to comments plug-in working, it is more practical to do it in this way. For an example, check out the comments on last week’s Question. Kris and I have been having a great discussion over there, and it is still underway.)
{ 5 comments }
What Happens next??? The question what happens next, happens next??ha ha
No, but seriously, it seems impossible to stop asking questions or expecting something to happen (i said seems impossible, not is impossible)
Again the mind searches for something to tell it, it has stopped asking questions…an experience, an empty mind, whatever. It loves to look for complexity where there is none
By the way, i took your advice on self-inquiry and was astounded at the ease of which you can discover the absolute obviousness of how this trinity of, I, IT and awareness actually works…its so logical!! However understanding intellectually is obviously not the same as really seeing how the ‘I’ arises.
I got to the point, after three hours of writing and questioning, where it became clear that the awareness of thought gives rise to an ‘I’ and the awareness of things gives rise to an ‘IT’, hence awareness is alone real . These things are perceived as different but are obviously the same in that they are both phenomena arising within awareness. So then i asked, why do i see seperation which = fear=discomfort=search, and the fear is not in the ‘I’, the ‘I’ is not a problem its the relationship between the ‘I’ and the ‘IT’ that causes fear. So its the seperation which causes fear, where is this seperation? where is the Boundary? and i concluded that the ‘I’ is the boundary because it is so intimate with awareness…….awareness>I>Thoughts>things, or……. there is awareness of an ‘i’ that has thoughts about things ….but then you can fuse the ‘I’ with thought since they are really the same and you have an awareness of thoughts about things which gives rise to the ‘I’. And since the ‘I’ and the ‘IT’ are mutually dependant, although the ‘I’ arises first, once the ‘I’ is seen to be an illusion so does the ‘IT’, giving rise to the subject / object fusion that you talk about…when ‘I’ is seen as ‘IT’ then conversely ‘IT’ is percieved as ‘I’. So the ‘I’ is obviously a phantom, the ghost in the machine!!
And that is why Nisargadatta encouraged people to stay with the thought of ‘I am That’, inverting the subject / object relationship. Of course all this made me very excited and had absolutely no effect on this’I’ which has been duly reinforced in it’s own smugness at working this out…..no big deal, some might say, but having read about these things but never actually applied any serious questioning to my own experience, it was surprisingly obvious that this is what is going on. I remember reading somewhere for the first time, that we are just awareness and thinking about this as some magical thing but how could we be anything else????????
The I AM THAT phrase tends to confuse people a bit. Even though, on an intellectual level, one might understand the meaning of the phrase, it is still looked upon from the viewpoint of the self. People identify with THAT even though the identity has nothing to do with it. In these cases, THAT becomes just another thing to have.
I AM THAT for those people would equal the self, or identity, is THAT. But is that in any way true? Can the self be anything other than what it already knows?
The seeming fusion happens when THAT is seen beyond thought. In other words, when things are seen without a center.
Of course, I am not saying that all people are like that, but the self is tricky when it comes to such things.
I’ll keep it short this time pal, ha ha ……….. Just to say thanks for your time and for shining some clarity on a very tricky subject…
Ps happy xmas in Japan and i look forward to reading your new blog…
Cheers, Kris
Takuin, just to let you know that I’m still lurking around like some ogre on your blog, I just haven’t commented because I don’t know what I can contribute – you’ve covered almost all the bases perfectly.
That I am That comment you made above, for example, answered the question I had in my head when I began playing around with that “view” of reality. But what if I kept that “view” up, until I’m so used to it? That everything became a part of that “I am that” statement? I am worried it would just be a trick of the mind, that I would be tricking myself into thinking I was enlightened or something.
Seasons blessings (once again!)
Cheers, Albert
Thanks for the comment, Albert.
I am glad to know you are still hiding in the bushes.
Takuin
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