4.1 The transcending of individuality

4.1.1 What is the illusory nature of individual experience?

As you will soon learn if the lesson is not already clear, language at best is only a crude pointer to the nature of reality. In comparison with direct intuitive experience, spiritually barren, late-twentieth century language is dull and clumsy. Yet, despite its limitations, language is the best available tool in the late-twentieth century by which the understanding of the true nature of this may be spread.

There is not now, nor has there been or ever can there be, any such thing as two unrelated individuals or events. All distinctions of time and space are relative to the consciousness which experiences them, and so are illusory from the absolute perspective of mind in its fully enlightened state. ‘I’ who write these words and ‘you’ who read them can simultaneously be relative points of reference for experiencing this, and absolute witnesses of this as that.

The simultaneous experiencing of this as relative and so illusory, and as the manifest form of that and so absolute and real, can only be described in language which is blatantly contradictory. The limitations lie in language, not in reality. ‘You’, who have no absolute existence can experience this simultaneously both in its relative nature as this and in its absolute nature as that.

By virtue of having attained a still, settled and silent mind, through successful completion of the exercises in chapter 3, you are poised to transcend the relative, and so illusory, sense of individuality. Successful completion of the first set of exercises in this chapter will enable you to transcend the illusion of your individual existence. Through your own hard work and your own insights, you will come to understand through experience that ‘you’ and ‘I’ are merely the result of the superficial play of illusion obscuring the true nature of this.

Language cannot express the transcendent experience of reality simultaneously in its absolute and relative forms. As you proceed along the path, be directed by your intuitive experiences, and do not waste your time attempting to resolve the contradictions by intellectual methods. Reality transcends all intellectual theories, and your task is to experience reality in its true nature, beyond mere words, thoughts or theories.

4.1.3 What are the meditative practices for transcending the illusion of individuality?

Committed one-pointed practice of the exercises in this section establishes the ability to distinguish between the individual sense of ‘I’, the small and relative part of mind in which thoughts occur, and the absence of the individual sense of ‘I’, the absolute mind transcending the thought process. Our Western educational systems endeavour to bring a child to maturity with a well developed sense of individuality. In contrast, through these advanced meditative exercises, you will learn that ‘I’-oriented awareness is a cripplingly limited and confining way to experience reality.

The illusory, subjective sense of ‘I’ is the basis for the wrong understanding that this is an objective reality. Put simply, common-sense wrongly tells you that ‘I’, ‘you’ and this book are three clearly separate things. It is essential to transcend the individual sense of ‘I’ through meditation if you are to break out of the illusion that there is now, or ever could be, separate and unconnected people, things or events.

In reality, all perceptions of difference and experience of separateness are merely the superficial result of misunderstanding the nature of the ten conditions. All people, events and things – all that is, has been or can be – are, in the final analysis of the enlightened mind, superficial variations in manifestation of the one, formless, qualityless, universal and all-embracing mind. These Implicate Technology teachings of the clear setting face-to-face with reality have only one result – the reuniting of the individual consciousness with that, its original nature.

All individual and cultural aims, achievements and experiences are simply evolutionary steps along the path to re-unite this with that. Some times are warmer, some are cooler; all times are movement towards realisation of that, obscured by the play of the ten conditions. Your conscious contribution towards this vast evolutionary goal begins with understanding, through direct intuitive experience, that ‘I’ and ‘objective reality’ are two apparent opposites which in reality are different aspects of the same unity, locked in an eternal illusion of separateness.

The goal of this part of the teaching will be realised when you know with the certainty of your own experience that the meditator, the object of meditation and the act of meditating are one. The observer, the thing observed and the act of observation are inseparable. The meditator, who is yourself, simply cannot be found when sought in the disciplined manner taught here.

Unenlightened Western scientists, groping in the dark (that is to say, lacking a coherent and structured model of reality) with enormously expensive technology and years of training and experience, have established through experiments that the observer, the thing observed and the act of observation are inseparable. You, alone in meditation, can establish the same truth about the nature of reality with a far greater authority of understanding. Our vastly expensive Western explicate science provides no conclusions or insights into the nature of reality which cannot be reached with greater understanding and insight by the individual using the tools of the world’s many implicate technologies.

4.1.4.1 What is the real nature of mind in its still and natural state? The real nature of mind is extension through space. That is to say, space and the objects it contains are products of mind.

The paragraph above is the object of your meditation. More precisely, the question in bold print is to be the focus of your one-pointed awareness. When you have completed this meditation you will know, with the clarity and certainty of direct intuitive experience, that the answer provided reflects the nature of reality.

This meditation is the first of a graded series of exercises designed to awaken your mind’s inherent ability to experience the transcendental nature of reality. The simple truth is that all you are now learning by direct intuitive experience was once known to you without any obscuring ignorance. Through time and the accumulated weight of experience across lifetimes, you lost sight of the inherent unity of this, and in your growing ignorance fell into the illusion that reality consists of objective, material phenomena. Now you are ready to work at the conscious process of recollecting your true nature, which transcends space, time, karma and all the other conditions which limit and determine the events of your life.

Begin this meditation by focusing your awareness one-pointedly on the question printed above in bold type. You will find that quite spontaneously your mind keeps repeating the question, over and over and over. After a time, you will find it requires relatively little effort to sustain awareness of this constant repetition.

In the first stage of absorption in one-pointed meditation, several processes occur simultaneously. These processes include both inner and outer activities. Your task is to engage in all activities required of you, while repeating one-pointedly the question printed in bold.

The inner activities are based on the thoughts generated by your one-pointed concentration on the object of meditation. A host of questions and observations will arise in your mind. You will attempt to understand your meditation in terms of the contents of your thought process.

All this activity is fruitless, and cannot take you further along the path of understanding the nature of reality through direct intuitive experience. Instead of putting your energy into thinking, practise whatever skills you have developed in performing the meditations from chapter 3 to still the thought process. Your real task is to focus one-pointedly on the bold question, and simultaneously to detach your awareness from absorption in the rising and falling away of your mind’s impressions.

The outer activities are the events of your day, configured by karma. You still have to get up, brush your teeth, eat, talk to other people and engage in whatever activities the day presents you with. In this secular Implicate Technology teaching, one-pointed meditation is conducted in the midst of ordinary, everyday conditions.

After a time, it should become clear to you that although one-pointed meditation is a new experience, the ability to detach your mind from responding to stimuli, both inner and outer, is familiar. You are able to practise one-pointed meditation because your efforts in the meditations of chapter 3 produced a still mind. The first stage of one-pointed absorption comes to a close when you are able to focus on the object of meditation exclusively and your mind becomes still and serene through detachment from stimuli.

The second stage of one-pointed meditation is characterised by the mind becoming quiet enough to be absorbed in the object of attention. Your mind will be serene and still, observing the constant repetition of the bold question and not responding to whatever thoughts may arise from inner nd outer stimuli. From this serene, one-pointed concentration comes understanding based on direct experience of the object of meditation.

When the mind is absorbed in the object of attention, experience of the object’s true nature arises and unfolds from pure, direct, clear intuition. The end result of your sustained effort will be surprisingly simple and obvious. You will just understand that the answer given reflects the nature of reality.

Of course, this understanding is not possible through a mere intellectual appreciation. In this particular meditation, you will know, with the unshakeable certainty of direct intuitive experience, that the nature of mind in its natural state is extension through space. When this happens, don’t waste your time trying to make logical sense of the experience –  eat a satisfying meal, have a relaxing bath and a good night’s rest, and then start on the following meditation.

4.1.4.3 How does mind remain still and serene? Simply by taking its natural shape – extension through space. When relaxed, the yogically trained mind becomes still.

4.1.4.5 When the mind responds to stimuli, does it also remain still? All mental activity of thoughts, emotions and observations can occur simultaneously with awareness located in the still state. The state of still, serene witnessing embraces and transcends reactions to stimuli.

4.1.4.7 Is the mind in its natural state, still and free from mental activity, different from the mind which experiences mental activity? That component of mind which experiences mental activity is what you have mistakenly, all your life, assumed to be the irreducible focus of experience – the individual sense of ‘I’. Mind in its natural state is a state of awareness in which each individual mind, each unique sense of I, is intuitively known in its true form as a confined component, a mere fraction of the true potential of mind.

Mind in its still form and mind in its active form are only apparently polar opposites. That limited component of mind which experiences mental activity on the one hand, and the expanded serene awareness of mind in its natural state on the other, are respectively gross and subtle forms of awareness. The active component of mind and the still component are simply gradations, or variations in form, of the one, universal, all-embracing, transcendent mind.

4.1.4.9 How does mind in its active form become mind in its natural, serene form? There is no absolute distinction or point of demarcation, between mind in its active and mind in its still forms. They are simply gross and subtle forms of the one, all-embracing, unified and transcendent mind, that.

In the previous exercise, you analysed the nature of active mind from the viewpoint of mind in its serene, still and natural state. When you search for the central, real and unshakeable core of individual experience, you discover only mind in its still and impersonal form. Mind in its individual and active form, when sought in a yogically disciplined way, cannot be found.

The observer, mind in its still and impersonal form, and the thing observed, mind in its active individual form, are found through experience to be inseparable. The inseparability of the observer, the thing observed and the act of observing is an irreducible central experience of any advanced meditative practice. This unshakeable truth of reality is knowable only by direct intuitive experience – the intellect, unaided by meditation-enhanced intuition, cannot encompass or explain this fundamental truth.

Be clear: it is not ‘I’ who experiences this. It is that which experiences through the individual sense of ‘I’. It is not ‘I’ who lives, but that which lives us.

By searching diligently and with undistracted awareness, or mindfulness as it is known in Buddhist implicate technology, for who it is who is doing the meditating and searching, you have discovered not the core of your individuality but an impersonal stillness and serenity. The object of meditation has been found to be inseparable from the meditator, who is inseparable from the act of meditation. As a careful inspection of the literature of the East on advanced meditative practices will reveal, regardless of the object of meditation chosen, it is invariably found to merge into an intuitive experience of reality as an inseparable, coherent, integrated and purposeful unity.

Through this realisation of the inseparability of reality, you now understand with direct intuitive experience that all aspects of mind form a meaningful whole. You have also learned that the meditator, when sought, cannot be found. The remainder of this Implicate Technology structured meditative system will bring you to the understanding that these insights reflect fundamental laws describing the underlying implicate structure of reality.

The first of these laws, understandable fully only when the final stage of enlightenment has been realised, is that every aspect of this is an externalised thought product of that. The second of these laws is that all sense of individuality, loneliness and separateness is an illusion suffered by mind in its unenlightened state. Motivated by unbounded love and compassion, the enlightened person works endlessly to bring all others to the release and freedom of enlightenment.

4.2.2.1 What is the illusory nature of all activity of the mind?

The meditative practice for allowing transcendental awareness to unfold is, yet again, simplicity itself. Whatever thoughts, ideas or emotions arise, neither inhibit nor encourage – simply observe. If this practice is carried out as instructed, the illusory nature of mental activity will be realised.

Your mind has now been trained to a degree of extraordinary alertness. It is capable of recognising the moment of birth of each thought, emotion or idea. All that is required at this stage is that whatever arises in your mind be allowed to do so freely, without any interference from you – simply be aware of each moment’s mental activity without becoming involved.

4.2.2.3 How is the relative, and so illusory, nature of conditioned experience to be transcended?

How are you to break free of the illusion of relative experience? How are you going to experience the absolute? How are you to break through and transcend the conditioned thought processes of your mind?

Begin by realising that you have arrived at the boundary of thought, you have reached the limits of what is thinkable and conceivable. Begin by realising that it is not possible to ascertain the true and absolute nature of everyday experience by thought. Reality can only be known by the clear, simple and direct experience of the transcendentally awakened and trained mind.

Having awaken to the transcendental nature of reality, the mind accepts what occurs, with simple directness. What occurs is accepted as it happens, because it is intuitively known and experienced as the conditioned form of mind in its absolute nature. Life is, as it spontaneously, harmoniously and inconceivably evolves across all of time towards the enlightenment of all of reality.

Be clear: even after you have attained the final stage of enlightenment, you will still be subject to the constraints of conditioned existence, you will still experience thoughts and emotions. The focus of awareness of an enlightened person can descend deep into conditioned existence. Suffering in his final agony, Jesus experienced a transient moment of desolation and despair, crying out: ‘My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?’.

Thoughts cannot embrace the whole of reality. Mind in its transcendental state cannot be grasped or understood by thought. A mind operating at the transcendental level witnesses, embraces and goes beyond, first the individual thought process, and then, as the meditations unfold, all of conditioned existence.

Mind in its transcendental form is a still, thought-free awareness, which witnesses and intuitively understands thoughts as activities conditioning and constraining the direct intuitive experiencing of reality. Thoughts are understood and experienced as potent and attractive within the terms of reference of ‘I’-based consciousness, the ultimately illusory, individual self. When the awareness is located in the transcendental state, one’s own thoughts are observed with detachment, as spontaneous natural occurrences, like wind, snow or thunderstorms.

4.3.1.1 What is the nature of the present moment?

The preliminary Implicate Technology meditation on the nature of time is taught in chapter 5 of Beyond the personality: the beginner’s guide to enlightenment. That meditation was designed to stabilise the awareness of a psychologically enlightened person in the understanding that reality occurs now, and only now. Be sure you understand that earlier meditation before starting on the meditation in this section.

One last word of advice before you begin the meditation: you are now in a mature phase of meditation. The heat of mental activity, creating the obscuring condensation on the window of perception, is diminishing along with the obscuring condensation. Remain calm as you begin to understand and experience clearly the nature of reality.

Do not fear as you intuitively experience the boundaries of space and time, life and death, crumble away. All that you will experience is the wonder and truth of your own nature. Nothing can happen to you that you are unable to deal with.

The past thought is no longer in existence. To the transcendentally awakened mind, enquiry into the nature of time and enquiry into the nature of existence are inseparable. This is because to exist is to be conditioned by time. Mind in its original and eternal state, that, transcends and embraces existence.

The structure and functioning of mind in its unenlightened state is a conditioned and limited form of mind in its natural and enlightened state. The processes of the conditioned mind are a faint and limited echo of mind in its serene and unconditioned state. By meditating one-pointedly on the nature of the mind’s processes whilst simultaneously witnessing the meditation with the transcendentally awakened mind direct intuitive experience of the nature of reality will unfold.

Only the present moment is in existence. Your previous thoughts have had their moments of existence and now no longer exist, except in memory. In the same way, the past thoughts of that, the previous configurations of the ten conditions which we experience as this, are no longer in existence.

The future thought, being not yet born, has not come into existence. The integrated, unified and purposefully evolving thought process of that unfolds conditioned existence, now. What will be is inherent in what is. The potential of this is realised as this is developed,  by the thought process of that, towards conscious re-integration with that.

The present thought unfolds spontaneously and uncontrollably.

The meditative exercises in chapter 3 of this book taught you that it is impossible to stop or control the thought process, except for limited periods. The aim of this Western meditative system is to achieve detachment from the attractions and distractions of the thought process. As you are discovering day by day, the yogically trained mind witnesses with serene detachment the spontaneous coming in to existence of each thought.

You are now able serenely to witness a thought on one level of your being and at the same time spontaneously experience it on another level. In the same way, that witnesses this with clarity wisdom and delight in what is, and that experiences this simultaneously from your viewpoint, and her viewpoint, and his viewpoint, and my viewpoint. This evolves moment by moment, thought by thought, spontaneously and uncontrollably, according to the inherent implicate laws of conditioned existence.

Be clear: nothing exists independently of mind in its unconditioned state. No part of this exists independently from any other part. All of this has no existence in and of itself; it is that alone which gives this existence.

In chapter 5 of the first book in this Implicate Technology meditative system, you learned that to split time into past, present and future is unreal – they are each contained in the present moment. The meditation in this section teaches you that the present moment alone exists: moment by moment, this comes into existence and evolves through time. When you understand this intuitively, then you are ready to realise the illusory nature of birth, death and time.