The Direct Experience of Non Duality

Q: What is Consciousness? 

A: Look around you... are you aware of what you see? 

Q: Yes 

A: Consciousness is the name commonly given to that which is aware of what you see, hear, think, etc. It is also called Awareness. 

Q: And what relationship does Consciousness have with me? 

A: It has an identity relationship. You are Consciousness, Awareness. But not only that: you are solely and exclusively Awareness. During dreams you change your body, your personality, your memories, you change many things, but you always remain the same Awareness. You have a body and a mind, but you are not a body and a mind; you are Awareness. 

Q: And what is the relationship between Consciousness and the external world? 

A: Where is the outside world located? Where are concrete things like the floor or clouds found? Where do you find abstract things like the monetary system or the immune system? 

Q: Somehow they're out there. 

A: No, pay more attention, try to investigate more deeply: what does your direct experience show you? It shows you that everything you know, that is, everything you come into contact with, is found within your Consciousness. 

Q: Yes, let's say it's as if inside my head there was a homunculus looking at the outside world as if he were sitting in an opera house watching an orchestra. 

A: No, it's not like that. Be more careful, it's not like watching an orchestra sitting inside an opera house. It is rather like being the opera house itself: which contains within itself all the reality of the concert. 

Q: However the concert inside my consciousness is a representation of a real concert taking place out there in the physical world. 

A: There is no representation, rather there is a presentation, that is, a manifestation of consciousness to itself and in itself in the form of the various known objects. Let me explain a little better. Consider a video surveillance system. A camera records what happens in a room and a computer analyzes the footage. In this example we clearly distinguish the known object, the knowing subject and the activity of knowing. The known object is the film. The computer is the knowing subject. Finally, recording the film is the activity of knowing. The cognitive process of the video surveillance system is a triad composed of three elements: knowing subject, known object and cognitive activity. These 3 elements are clearly distinct and separate from each other. More generally we can state that in any physical reality in which a cognitive process can be found, the cognitive triad is always present. The fact that there is this triad: that is, that object, subject and cognitive activity are 3 separate things, immediately implies that there is a reality existing outside the subject, a reality to which the subject has access. Are you following me? 

Q: Everything is quite clear. 

A: Conversely, in your direct experience, when you know anything the triad collapses into a monad: subject, object and cognitive activity are a single indivisible substance. Check for yourself right now. Try, for example, hearing a sound. Realize that you are not at all able to separate between them: hearing (cognitive activity), sound (known object), and the awareness you have of the sound/hearing (the subject). At this point, and unlike what happens in a physical process, it appears that the subject-awareness in the act of knowing an object is not accessing a reality external to itself, because the subject and object coincide, they are not separate. All reality is a manifestation of and in consciousness.

Q: Wow, what you say is so clear, simple and obvious. Yet I had never paid the slightest attention to it. This changes everything. But in the same way I also realize that the prudence of my skeptical and scientific mentality is already giving rise to a cascade of questions, doubts and possible objections. Would you be able to develop this topic much more in depth and possibly with both an analytical and experiential approach? 

A: Naturally, in my book you will find the 10 most convincing analytical arguments in favor of the primacy of consciousness over matter, accompanied by experiential considerations. I'm sure they will leave you completely convinced. Read to believe.

Experiences are given in 2 ways: as presentations and as representations.

Presentations are direct experiences expressed non-verbally, like qualia, and refer to themselves: they present themselves.

Representations are indirect, conceptual, expressed verbally and refer to something other than themselves: they present something other than themselves, that is, they represent a presentation or another representation.

Having clarified this thinking tool, let's move on to consider what is meant by non-duality of subject-object.

In a cognitive act, 3 elements are distinguished: the knower, the known and the knowing.

The known is reality, the being: the internal or external object known.

The knower is our mind.

The knowing is the awareness we have of the known, it is our consciousness.

For example, when we listen to a sound, 3 elements are present: the listener, the listening and the listened to; that is, subject, verb and object complement.

Now let's check what mode of existence these 3 elements have.

If we pay attention we will discover that at the level of representation these 3 elements are separate from each other, while at the level of presentation these 3 elements coincide: they have a single undivided presentation.

In fact it is easy to realize that presentationally only one thing is presented: the sound (listening_listened_listening), while only representationally we have the 3 separate elements.

The known is separated from the knowing only representationally, but not presentationally.

The knower is separated from the knowing only representationally but not presentationally.

While you listen to a sound your mind consists only in that listening; and the object listened to is present only as listening.

Since these 3 elements are presentationally coincident then the known (reality/being), the knowledge (awareness) and the knower (mind) are the same thing: Reality (Being) is Consciousness. All reality is only a vibration in awareness.

Thesis:

Since everything we know, everything we are conscious of, is only experience, then only experience and our consciousness exist.

Antithesis:

This statement seems like a tautology, that is, it seems to be stating that: “clearly we only know what we know”, but this does not imply that there are no things we do not know.

Synthesis:

However, upon careful analysis, one realizes that thesis and antithesis are working on two different levels: the antithesis is considering a horizontal plane, while the thesis is considering a vertical plane. Let us consider conscious experience as a film projected on a cinema screen, where the screen is consciousness and the film is the experiences we live. The antithesis remains “horizontally” within the content of the film, while the thesis vertically transcends the film, realizing that only the screen exists. The antithesis says that the content of the film contains only the scenes it contains; and horizontally speaking, this is correct. Instead, what the thesis wants to point out is that there is also a vertical perspective in which we can ask ourselves what the scenes of the film are made of, that is, what the experience is made of, what a thought is made of, what the color red, fear, crunchiness, sweetness, a perfume, etc. are made of... The answer is immediate: they are made of the knowledge we have of them, that is, of the awareness we have of them, that is, of our own consciousness. Experience from the point of view of its content, of its form, presents only what we know; instead, from the point of view of its substance, it presents only our consciousness. An audio file formally presents a song and substantially the hardware support in which it is saved. Here one could object that one can only know the form and not the substance. To which one responds that if consciousness were only one more experience among many others, then we could not access the substance of experiences. Instead, consciousness is not within experience, it is not an experience; on the contrary, consciousness is the external observer of experiences, for this reason it can transcend them and thus it can look at them from the outside and verify what substance the experience is made of.

Therefore it is correct to affirm, without risk of tautology, that: we only know our conscious experience and therefore only consciousness and what it experiences exist.

Maya (or unreality of phenomena) means that objects do not have an intrinsic existence, but only as consciousness. The example of the illusion of the rope mistaken for a snake in the twilight is commonly given. This illusion should be understood in the sense that the snake does not have an intrinsic existence, in fact in reality there is only the rope, the snake does not exist in itself. On the contrary, the snake has an extrinsic existence: it exists only in the mind of the person who has this illusion.

The realist claims that even though what we perceive is internal to consciousness, it is nevertheless caused by objects external to consciousness. In this way, the realist uses the concept of cause as a vehicle to be able to escape from consciousness. The problem, however, is that the concept of cause is in turn inside consciousness. In order to be used as a vehicle to escape from consciousness, it should be able to be both inside and outside consciousness; it should be a bridge that rests on one side on the external world and on the other on the internal world. However, in general, by exploring all our knowledge (concrete or abstract), we find none that can act as a vehicle or bridge to escape from consciousness: we are closed inside. To tell the truth: the very concepts of inside, outside and closed are in turn made of consciousness, and therefore more correctly we should simply say that everything is consciousness.

In Vedanta ethics is not so much about what to do or not to do, but how to experience or not to experience, how to live the experience. Instead ethics as set up in Western philosophy is more output-oriented: what to put out in terms of actions etc. Eastern ethics is more input-oriented: how to live the experience, after which the output will come spontaneously as a consequence of the input.

Why is consciousness an efficient as well as material cause of the world? Because if consciousness is the material cause of everything then it is automatically also the efficient cause of everything. If an object A acts on an object B and if both A and B are constituted by C (consciousness), then C is acting on C.

What are thoughts, emotions, sensations and perceptions made of? By studying perceptions we can discover how to relate them to each other, and thus we will obtain the various sciences (physics, biology, etc.). This is equivalent to understanding perceptions in relation to each other, therefore in a sense relative to another. But what are perceptions themselves: in an absolute sense. In an absolute sense perceptions, thoughts, emotions and sensations are the knowledge we have of them, therefore they are consciousness.

How do we know that we are conscious? Well, we just know it, immediately. And why? Because of the non-duality of the object with the subject. While in every other knowledge the subject (consciousness) is separated from the known object, in the case of self-consciousness there is no such separation, and therefore it is an immediate direct knowledge, that is, not mediated by some other object. Since it is not mediated, one cannot find an explanation of how one has this knowledge based on anything other than consciousness itself.

All objects dissolve in knowledge. They are therefore none other than consciousness.  Atma Nirvritti, Atamanda Krishna Menon

Let's pay attention to something that escapes: becoming does not happen in an imaginary world out there, but it happens in our mind. Therefore becoming must be justified first of all as a mental phenomenon, that is, we must explain the becoming of mental objects: Where do they come from before being experienced, where do they disappear once experienced. When I look at an object A, for example a red, and then I turn the other way: where did the object go? Where is that red now? Clearly: it has returned, it has dissolved, in the consciousness from where it came.

Find any piece of existence , take up anything that any one could possibly call a fact, or could in any sense assert to have being, and then judge if it does not consist in sentient experience. Try to discover any sense in which you can still continue to speak of it, when all perception and feeling have been removed; or point out any fragment of its matter, any aspect of its being , which is not derived from and is not still relative to this source. When the experiment is made strictly, I can myself conceive of nothing else than the experienced. Anything, in no sense felt or perceived, becomes to me quite unmeaning. And as I cannot try to think of it without realizing either that I am not thinking at all, or that I am thinking of it against my will as being experienced, I am driven to the conclusion that for me experience is the same as reality. The fact that falls elsewhere seems, in my mind, to be a mere word and a failure, or else an attempt at self-contradiction. It is a vicious abstraction whose existence is meaningless nonsense and is therefore not possible. 

F. H. Bradley in Appearance and Reality

I am travelling trough myself

Consider any object: this book, your hand, the apple in front of you, a thought of yours: anything. Now ask yourself: what is it, what is it made of, and where is it? You can answer these questions in a relative sense, that is, of one object in relation to another, and then you have the scientific explanations. But if you want to answer these questions in an absolute sense then you must mirror these questions in the subject: who is looking at the object, where is the object being looked at from, what is the object looking at? Then by paying close attention you will discover that the object is being looked at from within the object itself.

Consciousness pervades all experience, in everything known there is awareness of it. In the same way that every physical object is pervaded by space. So if in the case of space we say that an object pervaded by space is in space, then everything known is in consciousness.

I am not a known object because I can distinguish it, therefore separate it, from the witness of the object, that is, from consciousness: myself. That is, I can know the object separately from the witness, therefore there is something that differentiates them, that separates them. This something will therefore be the substance, the essence, the matter of which my consciousness is made. What is this something that separates them? Will it be a physical phenomenon or any other object? No, it cannot be a physical phenomenon or any other object, because the discourse would repeat itself: again I would distinguish this something from consciousness. Therefore, there is nothing left to say but that consciousness is made of itself.

Neti neti

Emergentist: I may not recognize myself in any object, and yet I may be a manifestation of an object X, such as the brain. For example: with neti neti I can come to understand that I will not be my brain, and yet I could still be an emergent phenomenon of the latter.

Nondualist: However, an emergent process has a material cause: space-time. In fact, an emergent process can be described with space-time coordinates, which means that it is made of space-time. At this point, it is enough to apply neti neti to space-time: I am space-time or rather I am the witness of space-time. Evidently, I am the witness: that is, I am the “space” to which and in which space-time appears. Are you, consciousness, the one who witnesses space-time or is space-time the one who witnesses you? Obviously, it is you.

The existence of any external object cannot be proved, because it cannot be shown that the object is different from the consciousness of the object.

Suppose you are dreaming of looking at a mango and at a certain point you look at another object. At that point where did the mango go?

The same goes for the waking state.

Perhaps it can help you to consider that by remaining in the strictly physical realm, an identical thing happens. Suppose again that you are looking at a mango and then you turn to look at another object. Where is the mango? Well, the mango in a strictly physical sense is not there: what is there is only a series of quantum fields organized in a certain configuration, which only you when you observe it recognize as a mango. Physically, the mango is a mango only if you look at (or eat) it.

Similarly, but in a much deeper and more pervasive way, every object is consciousness that sometimes appears as a mango and sometimes not.

What is a perception (or a thought, an emotion or a sensation) made of? You have two ways to answer this question. One is the relative way: explaining a perception with another perception and/or a thought. This is the way of science. The second is an absolute way: what is a perception in itself, without reference to other perceptions or thoughts (i.e. concepts). A perception is only the awareness you have of it. The perception of the wall behind me exists in a relative sense with respect to other perceptions, but in an absolute sense it is nonmanifest.

Remember that for Western mythology (and later science), creation (for science the natural world) is a real fact, of real physical objects. Instead for Indian philosophy creation is a drama, a performance on the stage of consciousness. When an actor finishes his scene, he goes to the dressing room and is no longer manifest, until he is called back on stage in a subsequent scene.

Once one realizes that consciousness does not emerge from matter, but rather that matter and mind are fluctuations of consciousness, one also comes to the conclusion that mind is more fundamental than matter. That subtle objects are more fundamental than gross objects.

Therefore just as there is a physics of gross objects, there must be a "physics" (or meta-physics) of subtle objects, of minds.

In this regard many civilizations have elaborated various metaphysics of minds; the Indian one, as usual, is one of those that has been most successful in investigating these things.

Many investigations have used altered states of consciousness: meditation, psychedelics, etc...

An interesting question is the relationship between physical time and meta-physical time. For example, I see no reason why the two arrows of time have the same direction. Therefore a mind can reincarnate in both the physical future and the physical past. Can you follow me?

Now consider all the reincarnations of a mind as if they were the steps of a single dance, or the notes of a single symphony, which take place over a metaphysical time and over different physical times.

There are dark notes (=dark lives) and happy notes (happy lives), and all the notes (the lives) are necessary to the overall beauty of the symphony.

Now, is a symphony freedom? Let us take the following definition of freedom: that of not having causes outside of oneself. In this sense does a symphony have causes outside of itself? The symphony is self-contained: its beauty and harmony reside entirely within itself, it does not depend on other symphonies. In this sense the symphony is free, and similarly the cycle of lives is free.

What a person does in life is therefore an expression of the entire symphony of his lives: every act has a role, every decision counts, every pleasure has its note, etc... Be careful, even the fact of thinking metacognitively about all this is part of the dance.

Now why all this? Why a symphony? In itself: we said that a symphony is uncaused. The beauty you observe in something (the sea, a sunset, a woman, a caress, a sacrifice, a work of art) is always uncaused: it refers only to itself. This is why the ancient rishis spoke of Lila, of the cosmic game: a game is an end in itself.

Therefore, one can be happy in every note of life, and advaita teaches us to be so. Once advaita has penetrated our soul, our feelings, our gaze, our way of doing things, etc... then even the bitter becomes tasty.

Where and when does a dream exist with respect to the space-time of the dream? This is a badly posed question: the space-time of the dream is inside the dream and therefore cannot serve as a reference system for the dream. Can we place the dream in the space-time of waking life? No: in fact if I dream of traveling to Mars, the space I travel in the dream has no correlation with the physical space of waking life (I will in fact be still and lying in my bed). Therefore with respect to the space of waking life, the space of the dream does not exist: because it does not contain it. Therefore from a relative point of view of the dream: the space-time of the dream exists, and perhaps it originated in a dreamed big bang. Instead from the point of view of waking life it does not exist and has never existed. What connection is there between waking life and sleep? Not a quantitative connection, but a meaningful one. A dream can be an expression of waking experiences and vice versa. Similarly, the waking universe exists only with respect to itself, but with respect to its exterior it has "only" a relationship of meaning.

So what we can say is that manifestations arise to express meanings coming from different levels of existence.

Consciousness is not a phenomenon within time. Physical phenomena are temporal phenomena, therefore describable with a temporal coordinate.

Time is in consciousness, time is one of the phenomena of consciousness in consciousness and is made of consciousness. Think about the passage of time during a dream: it is totally within consciousness.

When you wake up, where did the dream time go? It simply returned unmanifested.

During anesthesia or deep sleep, the time of wakefulness is unmanifested.

Is consciousness present during deep sleep? In light of what has been said, this question loses meaning, because it presupposes that consciousness is in time. For the same reason, it loses meaning to think that if you don't think there is no consciousness. You and I have the same consciousness, whether you think or not is not related to whether I think or not. From the absolute point of view of our single consciousness, all manifestation (thinking, etc.) happens simultaneously: there is no absolute time that acts as an inertial reference system.

Copyright ©2024 by Alessandro Sanna