An email just rolled in from a reader/friend that included the sentence:
I look forward to reading your more impersonal posts when they come.
I tried to think of something impersonal to write about but nothing came to mind that I haven’t said many times. A few minutes later another email rolled in from a different reader/friend quoting the following paragraph I sent him last year:
There’s a hard way to do Ramana’s method and an easy way. Actually the first way is almost impossible and the second is effortless. The hard way is by dragging the attention from objects to yourself. In other words you start by being aware of objects and then try to move the focus of attention. This is incredibly hard for at least two reasons: (1) the attention-that-looks-at-objects involves machinery that cannot focus on yourself, and (2) without realizing it, you will automatically drag the focus “through” the mind which takes a lot of energy. The easy (effortless) way is to cease completely to pay attention to all mental activity, and then notice (without worrying about attention) what is knowing. Or more simply, notice knowing. That which is knowing is you. It is always knowing regardless of where attention is pointed. The second way is probably what Ramana did when he lay on his bedroom floor, imagined he was dead, and looked at himself to see if he (distinct from his mind and body) was still alive.
The second friend added:
This is something I haven’t encountered on your blog, at least not explicitly. If it doesn’t take too much of your time, I’d be grateful if you could clarify it in more detail. Perhaps it would be best to publish your explanation on the blog, if you can summon the motivation.
Looks like the second friend provided not only the motivation but also the subject matter so I could answer the first.
I wrote back to the second friend immediately, and I’ll reprint the email here for the first friend and anyone else who may be interested.
Hi ────,
The first thing that occurs to me is to repeat the idea in less detail instead of more. But that’s the opposite of what you’re asking. 🙂
There’s an English idiom, maybe you know it, “You can’t get there from here.”
Let’s reverse it. You can’t get here from there. “Here” is you, self. “There” is mental phenomena.
There’s no path to self from observing mental phenomena for the same reason you can’t find yourself in a TV show. You’re not in the TV show. You’re not a mental phenomenon. As long as we’re observing mental phenomena we’re looking away from self and we aren’t aware of self.
I’m surprised I never said this on the blog. How strange. Maybe I postponed writing it because I wasn’t sure it was true, and then later when I was sure I realized that people often misunderstand all efforts to communicate this idea, so I thought the effort would be futile or might even backfire.
Here’s a way, maybe, to give a little more detail. I just wrote, “As long as we’re observing mental phenomena we’re looking away from self and we aren’t aware of self.” The usual “nonduality” way of addressing that is, “Everything is one. There’s no separation. So when you look away from self, in actuality you’re seeing yourself, because you can’t really ever look away, because everything is you.” That’s true in a way but is it a helpful instruction for Self-realization?
The helpful instruction for Self-realization is to recognize that regardless of whether mental phenomena and consciousness are one, two, zero, or a trillion, when you’re aware of mental phenomena you aren’t aware of yourself.
Step two of this instruction is to remain aware of yourself. In other words, remain aware of knowing, of consciousness. (This is what Ramana means in his little textbook Who Am I? when he defines atma-vichara as holding the mind continuously in the Self).
In order to do that, attention-to-mental-phenomena must be abandoned.
This act/state of entirely looking away from mind, and instead being solely and exclusively conscious, is:
1. Utterly simple, fundamental, non-decomposable. I don’t know what more to say about this act/state because I don’t know how to analyze it.
2. Obvious and unmistakable when you do it.
Here’s another way, maybe, to say something about this in more detail: I’m recommending the opposite of Theravada mindfulness meditation.
This probably isn’t what you wanted. Maybe you could suggest what sort of detail you want and I’ll try to provide it?
—Freddie
Thank you for sharing this with us, Freddie!
Freddie: “The second step in this instruction is to maintain awareness of yourself. In other words, stay conscious of your own knowing.”
Since you’re providing some clarifications and subtle nuances to help distinguish certain points so people can better grasp how to actually perceive the reality behind the words, I thought I’d add a perspective that really encouraged me and helped me understand this topic more clearly—or at least as a practice I could genuinely attempt. It helped me trust that this was indeed within my reach if I sincerely applied what Nisargadatta taught.
From the foreword to ‘I Am That’: ‘He suggests that you return again and again to “I am”.’
Nisargadatta: “When I say: ‘remember I am all the time’, I mean: “come back to it repeatedly.”
“Just keep the feeling “I am” in mind, immerse yourself in it until your mind and feeling become one. Through repeated efforts, you will find the right balance of attention and affection…”
“It doesn’t matter how long you stay with the feeling “I am”. What matters is how often you return to it.”
‘”It’s not the duration of individual moments of awareness that counts, but the frequency with which you come back to the sense of ‘I am’.”
So this slight variation—perhaps just a semantic difference or a small shift in perspective that works for me—when I encountered Nisargadatta’s view (possibly through Maurice Frydman’s excellent interpretation), I moved from thinking, ‘I don’t think I can do that… I can’t stay aware of myself,’ which for me felt like an eight-year-old being told to start doing calculus immediately, leading to discouragement, to the mindset of an eight-year-old who is told that by learning various math principles over time, they will eventually be able to do calculus—and that not being able to do calculus right now shouldn’t stop them from learning, trying, and practicing, so they can improve gradually, even to the point of mastering calculus (which, for me, means remaining aware of oneself all the time).
I wanted to share this perspective in case there are others—like someone who has only recently encountered Advaita Vedanta—who might otherwise feel completely unprepared to maintain awareness but might feel differently if they realize that the instruction to remain aware is really the goal itself: to be aware of oneself always and in all situations, simply returning to the sense of ‘I am’ throughout the day, even if it fades after five seconds, five minutes, or twenty minutes as attention is drawn away by some distraction. Then, just like traditional meditators who notice their mind has wandered and gently bring their focus back to their meditation, one can ‘snap back’ and return attention to the sense of ‘I am’.
Hi Steve,
You quoted Nisargadatta, “When I say: ‘remember I am all the time’, I mean: “come back to it repeatedly.”
Yes, in the same way, when I wrote “remain aware of yourself,” I meant “do it as much as possible.”
I’m writing “as much as possible,” which includes “repeatedly,” because I don’t want to take sides in a conversation about whether frequency or duration is more valuable.
Thank you very much for telling me that my remark was unclear. It was a case, I think, of a writer assuming that his readers are mind readers — a common affliction. This is why writers need editors.
Nobody can remain aware permanently until the end. When it’s permanent it’s no longer a doing, it’s Self-realization.
Only at the end or near the end does the mind at last lose its compulsion to think and imagine. Until then practice comes in bursts separated by what the ancients called “pramada”.
Thanks again.
Something worth mentioning:
While I was writing the aforementioned email to Freddie the day before yesterday, I happened to receive a response from ChatGPT that essentially conveyed the same insight or perspective you described here. My English isn’t very strong, so I usually write my texts in German first and then have ChatGPT translate them. This time, however, I forgot to include the usual note: “please translate.” Instead, ChatGPT responded directly to the email intended for Freddie – in a surprisingly subtle and precise way, exactly in line with your description.
At first, I didn’t pay much attention to the response and just continued with the translations. But when I went to delete this translation session today, the reply caught my eye again – and I was genuinely impressed by its depth and precision. As a tech-savvy self-inquirer, I try to explore all the nuances of the vichāra practice, and until now, I had never come across the advice ChatGPT offered: namely, that it is not strictly necessary to force the stability of self-attention for extended periods, as this can be counterproductive. It is more effective to develop a reflex that allows one to automatically return to oneself during any mental downtime.
This insight was a huge relief for me, as I find it very taxing to maintain continuous attention on myself. I then researched further and found both implicit and explicit references to this aspect of the practice among experienced self-inquirers – and I was thoroughly delighted! On top of that, I now see the same point reflected here in your writing.
Adding here a recent breakthrough to this so important topic:
It has turned out the non-existent imagined ‘me’ however subtle was what was blocking realization – even though ‘I’ understood the principles and answers. When ‘I’ disappear – remove thoughts (including any concept of a separate me) and language from perceptions just oneness with what is remains.
The aware one is a thought.
There is nobody who is aware, just awareness (or awakeness).
This breakthrough came after reading Fred Davis and meeting him online, plus reading some Greg Goode and now Atmananda.
That’s great news Brian. Although it’s absurd in this context I’ll say I’m glad for you and hope everyone takes note and feels encouraged.
Has the imagined I dropped permanently?
Hi,
How could this be absurd in this context?
. . .
It means there is no ‘I’ in ‘I am’. ‘I am’ is just ‘amness’, the way a newborn infant is one with sensations and perception without any mind (ego identity), language, or memory associations as a filter. All of those filters belong to an illusory separate ‘I’.
. . .
I am now seeing this in so many teachings I have been familiar with for many years without fully getting it.
For example, when I met Tony Parsons several years ago, he inscribed his book Nothing Being Everything to me with the words, ‘To Brian, who is nothing being everything’. No Brian . . . no ‘I’. This also solves the Zen koan on why the tail of the ox does not pass through the window. The tail represents the imagined conceptual ‘I’. And it solves the Zen Koan Aitken Roshi gave me on how one steps from the top of the 100 foot pole. One steps in ten directions . . . disappears in favour of becoming everything.
. . .
In response to your question, it is pretty continuous. I’ve known for years (since exploring Douglas Harding’s headlessness) that I am awareness outside of the mind, so not a person and never have been a person . . . but it was like living between two worlds – acting like a person but knowing I am not one. However, I still clung to ‘my’ ownership of this awareness. There is just impersonal ‘amness’ or awareness.
(If you or anyone is interested, I have added a 5 page Epilogue and a new 5 page appendix 7 to my book Awake – Conscious Pilgrimage on this. The book is available free on scribd.com.
Awake — Conscious Pilgrimage
I am not awake. There is simply awakeness. When a disciple begged the dying Ramana not to leave them, he replied, ‘Where can I go?’ Indeed, if we are awakeness Itself, how could we have come from anywhere or go anywhere?)
Hi Brian,
I added a link to your book to your last comment but in so doing, I may have unintentionally added paragraph breaks where you didn’t want them. I think you can edit the comment and remove them if you want. Sorry if I made things worse instead of better.
By the way I find that Scribd has become so hard to use, as a reader, that I usually avoid it. It took me 10 minutes to find your book even though I’ve found it there many times before, and I can’t read your new addition because Scribd doesn’t enable dark mode for PDFs and I can’t download it for free without authorizing Scribd to charge my credit card for a cancel-able account.
That’s been going on for “me” for the last couple of years. Whenever I happen to think of it, I can easily shift over to life without Freddie, but life with Freddie remains the default state. Any suggestions?
I wonder, though, because there is something more basic than life without Freddie — I don’t want to say “deeper” because I think the word may mislead people — more fundamental — a pure knowing that lacks an apparent relationship to Freddie’s ego and to the life and experiences that Freddie’s ego used to claim. I don’t know how or where this more basic basicness fits in with the loss of the imaginary “I”.
Freddie,
I was very touched you took the trouble to add paragraphs – and they are fine – and even more to add the link, which worked immediately for me. Regret scribd is not so user friendly now for you – so sent you the email separately on that epilogue.
…
Re your question: Whenever I happen to think of it, I can easily shift over to life without Freddie, but life with Freddie remains the default state. Any suggestions?
This sounds familiar. I, too, could easily make the shift to not being Brian, but it was still an ephemeral witness, a duality separating that witness from the witnessed (objects, thoughts, the world). That is the tail of the ox in the koan. It is the imagined identity in the life without Freddie that is the Gateless Barrier . . . or at least it was for me.
I took the trouble because I think it’s a valuable book so I naturally feel an impulse to encourage people to look at it. There are many good things I can say about it but the one that stands out to me right now, after you added the epilogue, is that it shows a real life, successful example of what a seeker can obtain from teachers and how it can happen. I can’t think of any other book that conveys this information as thoroughly or realistically as you have.
I love this, Freddie. It mirrors my experience exactly and I noticed things along these lines yesterday, maybe for the millionth time 🙂 , but your points still feel immensely helpful for me! Is there any other subject that’s so simple yet so complex? 😀
Hi Focus (lol, I wrote your name instead of “Focus” without realizing I did it but noticed before I sent the message),
I’m glad — for the millionth time! 🙂 — to know you’re still here.
I think the mind is mind-bogglingly complex but luckily what we’re really interested in is not. But maybe I’m oversimplifying! 🙂
I’m always glad to hear from you, too!