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.