Q: I would just like to clear a few things up.
The world is an appearance in awareness and as awareness-they cant
be separated, although many distinctions can be made about appearance.
Energy, in the form of light seems to enter the eye. This energy
is translated by a brain that is in total darkness. A world seems to
appear of separate objects when in fact it is nothing but brain
activity- neurons firing and connecting to other neurons which fire and
so on. So, in the dream state, even without light
entering the eye, the brain is active as the waking state, creating a
world. Energy is everything, everything is energy. Matter and energy
cannot be separated (E=MC squared) Therefore, that which knows the
effect of energy cant be energy itself. What I am saying,I think, is
that awareness is prior to energy-it "knows" energy. Awareness has no
objective qualities so it cant be energy, because energy can be
objectified-it can be known. So awareness is absolutely nothing at all-
zilch. However, this nothingness gives rise to energy, movement and
space. Nothing can be everything. Is this right?
A: You are correctly seeing that the world is nothing but appearance -
even conceptually we must negate the appearance as a translation by the
brain from pure data, signals received from the senses. As you see,
the dream state is created and the world appears just as convincingly,
accompanied by the character "ME" along with his thoughts, desires
and fears. In the same way this "waking state" is only an appearance
IN Consciousness. What you are remains to know the passing of both
states.
So "awareness" is just another word - what it points to is the
actuality - pure subjectivity - that pure subjectivity is what we refer
to as "I". Yet this "I" is mixed up with the appearance, with objects
- body-mind.
As you are seeing, so-called "energy" is the substance of the
manifestation - it moves and the world appears from this nothingness.
Yet this energy is not apart from the nothingness of awareness or Being
or Existence or Life. Life "moves" and becomes aware of itself, as
"this and that". The "this and that" are known conceptually through
the mechanism of mind, like a prism which breaks up pure light into the
spectrum - the colored light is not separate or different from it's
source.
So even the "brain" is a concept, another manifested object,
appearing in this open space, this obviousness of pure subjectivity -
"I". What we've been seeking has always been what is looking, the very
Self of selfs, the seeing behind the "seer", the knowing behind the
"knower".
What you are is Life itself, knowing itself, living itself,
appearing TO itself only. In Vedanta they say - SatChitAnanda -
Existence IS Awareness IS Everything - or Life is knowing itself as
Everything. This is a direct description of this very moment -
what-you-are.
And when even the concept of Life and movement is negated, there is only stillness and silence, the actuality of Mystery.
love
randall