Dear C,

The Teaching, Revisited

1. Awareness is always and already realized. It’s always and already the case. (This is what direct experience ultimately and directly reveals.)

2. Therefore, it is impossible to become Self-realized. Utterly impossible.

3. Don’t stop with Neo-Advaita, though–that is, with “lip syncing the lyrics” in 1 above. Instead, out of freshness, interest, glee, and wonderment, investigate and contemplate whatever seems to be evidence for “ignorance” (avidya). The result, in each case, will be that ignorance does not exist (asat).

4. When it’s clear that there never was any ignorance in the first place, then–simultaneously–it’ll be clear that only Awareness is, i.e., only Being is. 

What Is Direct Experience?

Question: Are all the experiments in the direct path intending to show that there is actually no direct experience?

1. It sounds as if you don’t quite misunderstand what direct experience is. Let’s start at the beginning, then. Let’s say that direct experience refers to whatever is the case. 

2. Take a sight (which is one example of a direct experience). Your direct experience–initially–is the experience of a sight.

3. Then the inquiry unfolds. At which point, you understand that it’s not a sight (a visual object). Instead, it’s just color and shape–or “colorshape.”

4. But then you don’t find an independently existing “colorshape.” You only find seeing, which is none other than “colorshape.” Stick with seeing–and go on.

5. But then seeing isn’t an independent object either because seeing is appearing to awareness.

6. But wait. That’s the first gestalt indicated in 5 above: a subject/object gestalt. Is that even true? No, direct experience reveals that seeing is appearing within the “space-like” substance of awareness. That’s the second gestalt: an arising-in-space model.

7. But wait! Is that even true? Not quite. Ultimately, seeing is nothing but awareness. Therefore, there’s a “sublation” of the arising-in-space model as well.

Therefore, what direct experience ultimately reveals is that there’s only awareness.

In other words, come back to our “loose definition”: direct experience refers to whatever is the case.

But whatever is the case turns out to be none other than awareness.

So, the very essence of direct experience is awareness.

Question #2

Question: For the touching experiment which involves a hand touching the floor, while the sensations are not directly experienced, what about your hand being impeded by the object? 

Good questions. No, and no. Let’s see what’s really the case:

1. Close your eyes. Put all your preconceptions (= superimpositions) in an imaginary drawer off to the side, close the drawer, and forget about them.

2. Now, put your hand on a cushion or the floor. 

3. Ask: “What is given in direct experience?” Answer: a dull, or warm, or cool (etc.) sensation.

4. Without the use of thought or memory, do you discover “a floor”? No! There’s no physical object “out there,” provided that you set aside thought (= superimposition).

5. Without the use of thought or memory, do you discover “a hand that’s performing the touching?” No! That’s a visualization. Set it off to the side and experience only this “insentient” (jada) sensation.

6. Without the use of thought (e.g., some Newtonian theory about “action” and “reaction”), do you discover a hand “being impeded by” a floor? No! It’s just a tingling sensation.

7. But then that tingling sensation is, actually, sensing. And sensing is actually lightly wafting or floating in a boundless sea of aware presence. Experience this now!

With kindness,

Andrew