Is Awareness 'The Absolute'?
Q: I have a question regarding what has been referred to as the "Absolute" or the Supreme
State. Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj said that
we are the changeless awareness that illumines the infinite content of consciousness.
C: I stand by that for sure!
Q: To me it is obvious that I am, and that there is this eternal, never-changing presence of awareness
in the background - my question is regarding whether or not this awareness is actually what I am in the very deepest sense.
C: Yes, you are that Light of Awareness that shines forth as Consciousness (I AM).
Q: Although Maharaj and many others say that you are this awareness, he also mentions that you
are the Absolute, which is "beyond awareness", beyond the sense of "I am", and that the absolute transcends birth, being,
and death.
C: Here you kind of get hung up on the semantics or languaging of what IS and PRIOR to language
and semantics. Using a word - “Awareness" - to point to The Absolute is just that – a pointer. Awareness is the
objectless Subjectless Light of Being. Consciousness is the KNOWING “I am", there IS existence, consciousness, aliveness.
Q: It is also stated that beingness or "I am" is
dependent upon the body-mind and disappears when the body dies.
C: Correct. The body-mind is like the candle and consciousness is like the flame that consumes
the candle, whereupon as the last bit of fuel is exhausted the flame goes out. But the Light that IS cannot be extinguished
because That is NOT an object. Call it a Flameless Light if you like. But bear in mind that no word can ever capture it because
it is That which gives essence and appearance to the presence and the absence of the body-mind and consciousness.
Q:
Is there a difference between the changeless in which everything, even the "I am", happens, and the Absolute?
C: Yes and no. The changeless is not an object that comes and goes and therefore IS The Absolute.
Yet that Absolute appears AS everything, arising here and now in this timeless moment, so to speak…
Q: I guess what I'm getting at is whether or not I'm actually aware of the Absolute,
C: NO! You ARE the Absolute so to “be aware” of that you would have to be separated
from that and there is no separation between you as consciousness (I AM) and The Absolute. These are, as is forever POINTED
to, NOT Two. Or, “One without a second”.
Q: Because I feel a strong need to abide fully in the state I was in before I was born and that
is unaffected by death.
C: You already do abide as That. Trying to recover that seems to obscure that. Pause thought right
now for a timeless instant: Here and now you ARE and already always abide AS that. You are just trying to capture it as if
you were separated from that. That is a fool’s errand!
Q: Is this simple, ever-present presence of awareness that I feel the Absolute, or is even this
just a transient state that disappears sooner or later, and if so how does one realize the Absolute?
C: “One” does NOT “realize the absolute”! Who is there to do that? Where
is any separate entity that is NOT already whole and complete, not already The Absolute? This is the ignorance of a mind that
takes itself to be separate – yet that mind is just a notion, an idea of a person apart from The Absolute. Do a bit
of looking for that so called person with a separate substantial existence apart from Being, Awareness, Aliveness itself and
see what you find. I promise you will come up empty handed. And in that cognizing emptiness you are as you already always
are will be have forever been – the Living Buddha-Nature, this Absolute arising as Being.
The bottom line is, YOU ARE THAT. Full Stop.
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