Irena:
Based on our discussion today,
I wanted to share this excerpt from
The Ten Thousand Things by Robert Saltzman.

I find it valuable and not that different
from what I am hearing from Roger.
Grateful to Roger for prompting all the
deconstruction of experience as to single out
things that were maybe missed,
and the way I see it now,
at some point we come to see that splitting
happens as a mental exercise only while
life always shows up as one single flow.

 Q: Sir, I want to ask for your confirmation that a knowing is always present at any given moment, and that no thought ever passes without this knowingness. I have been told that nothing ever happens without the knowingness. Does that mean that I should see myself as the knowingness and watch the mind’s play without getting attached to it? Should I see and understand this world as a play of beliefs so that while thoughts may disturb, it can be seen that I am not that? Is that enlightenment? Can it be seen that every thought that seems to hurt is only my ego getting hurt, and that I am not ego, but I am that which must watch ego without reacting? Is that enlightenment? The knowingness passes this question to you for clarification in the light of your understanding.
Thank you, sir.

A: The apparent space in which perceptions,
feelings, and thoughts seem to arise
could be called “knowingness,” as you refer to it,
or “awareness,” but I am not sure that awareness
can be so easily separated from the apparent content
of awareness that changes constantly.

What if awareness and the content of awareness,
which in your question you have separated,
is really one and the same thing – the same process?

What if any attempt to separate out thought from thinker,
perception from perceiver, or feeling from feeler
is doomed to succeed only in imagination?

To ask this in another way,
how is the knower different
from knowing or from the known?

Is there a difference?

What if knower, knowing, and known are not three
distinct items, but one and the same happening
just called by different names depending upon point of view?

What if knower, knowing, and known cannot be separated
or distinguished from one another at all?

There are people who say that the so-called
“apparent world” exists only as a dream,
and that “enlightenment” means seeing the dream as a dream.

I’m not on board with that.
For me, “enlightenment” – or, as I prefer to call it,
“awakening” – is not about separating myself
from the world of perceptions, feelings, and thoughts,
nor about regarding what is seen, felt, and thought
as “only a dream,” but about the liberty to participate
fully and whole-heartedly in the everyday world
of ordinary events while comprehending the essential
emptiness and impermanency of “myself” at the same time.

I am not interested in managing disturbing thoughts
by telling myself that I am not that, as you asked.

From my perspective, thoughts and thinker are two words
for the same happening – the same flow.

In my experience, there are no thoughts without a thinker,
nor a thinker without thoughts.

Thought and thinker cannot be separated at all.
So if there is a disturbing thought, the disturbance is me.

That said, thoughts and thinking are fleeting and evanescent,
so in the very next moment, the “disturbance-me”
– who is, after all, simply comprised of thoughts and thinking,
feelings and feeling, and the like, and has
no actual separate identity apart from thoughts and thinking
– could be replaced by a “compassion-me.”

One moment disturbed and blinded,
the next moment untroubled and comprehensive.

One never knows what might happen next.

This unity or mutually co-dependent emergence of thoughts,
thinking, and thinker can be confusing and difficult
to understand, I know. And the greatest impediment
to recognizing and comprehending that co-dependent mutuality
is rooted in the desire for self-permanency – the desire
for a separate existence as the unchanging center of an
ever-changing universe.

That desire is the subtext of your question.
If one can see the futility of that desire – see, I mean,
that everything is flowing and changing constantly,
including myself, and that nothing, including myself,
stands apart from the flow – the confusion may clear up.
Does that help?

Q: Yes, sir.
I am nothing but the reaction of a bundle of thoughts,
and you have just cleared up one of those thoughts,
but tell me this: Does understanding mean seeing clearly
what is and choosing your response?

A: I was not saying that you are a reaction.
I was saying that thoughts and thinker are not two separate items.
They are one and the same flow.
Any reaction is just more thought.

The notion of a “myself” that has thoughts or could
react to thoughts is a false understanding, I am saying.

That mistaken view engenders a sense of separation,
or duality, where no separation actually exists.

In that duality arises fear – fear of what might be thought,
felt or otherwise experienced next.
Do you see that?
Seeing duality where there is none creates fear.

When thinker is set apart from thought and thinking,
fear arises inherently. Then, as an antidote to that fear,
the possibility of becoming “enlightened” seems highly desirable.

So setting thinker apart from thought creates fear,
which feels disturbing as you said, and also creates
an imagined escape from fear – the fantasy of “enlightenment.”

Splitting off thinker from thought and promoting
the now separate “thinker” to a position of superiority
over thoughts and feelings allows the creation of a
so-called observer, which is the “entity” that is going to
become “enlightened.”

I say so-called observer advisedly; it does not exist
except as just another thought – an habitual, repetitive thought.

Who, after all, is observing the observer?
And who is observing the observer of the observer?

Now, according to the scheme underlying your questions,
this newly split-off observer will “attain” enlightenment,
not by seeing and understanding the false duality
between thinker and thought, which would heal the split
that gave rise to fear in the first place,
but by enlarging the split, by increasing the sense of duality
to its absolute maximum.

When “enlightened,” so goes the tale, not only am I superior
to thoughts, which I have, but now, as a jnani –
an enlightened one – I’ve really made the grade.

As a “self-realized being,” I don’t need to mess around
with thoughts at all. I have “seen that I am not that.”

That “self-realized being” is just another thought
never occurs to me.

This is not enlightenment, but delusion, and because
you think that I, Robert, “know something,”
you have asked me to “confirm” that delusion.

You asked if “understanding means seeing clearly
what is and choosing your response.”
I wonder if you see that this question implies
the same issues of fear and splitting
that I have just addressed.

No, I would not say that understanding means choosing.
I’d say that understanding means comprehending
that one might have the feeling of choosing,
but not the power actually to choose.

There is no entity, no little “decider”
in my head that stands apart from the
incessant stream of perceptions, feelings,
and thoughts, to be choosing anything.

That imagined entity – the little decider
that some people imagine is the “real me” – is
not real at all, but a ghost in the machine.

No one has thoughts.
No one stands apart from thoughts to have them.

Without perceiving, feeling and thinking,
“myself” does not exist.

We are perceptions, feelings and thoughts.

Don’t take my word for this.
Look into it.

Instead of asking me to confirm your second-hand ideas,
throw those ideas away and make your own living.

The attempt to stand apart as a permanent observer,
decider, and chooser is not enlightenment at all,
I say, but a fool’s errand abetted by tradition and dogma.

As for “seeing clearly,” that requires a freshness
of vision in each moment, free, insofar as possible,
of overlaid beliefs and doctrines.

One can learn spiritual dogma easily.
It’s already written down, cut and dried.

One cannot, however, choose to understand
any more than one can choose to fall in love.

You cannot attain self-knowledge by willing it,
nor by listening to traditional explanations.
You get what you get when you get it.

When I say these things, some people understand,
and some don’t. No one controls that either.

That reminds me of the story of the teacher
who pointed to a spot on the ground in front of him,
and said to his student, “See?” “Yes,” said the student.
“I see.”
”Well then,” replied the teacher.
“If I see and you see, why do you not understand?”