Unassailable

In the vastness of space, imagine a single pinprick of intense light. Now switch the perspective; you are that point of light. To you there is only the emptiness of space. Now the space is receding. It is fading away and soon there will be no reference for you to know that you even exist. Yet, you are and you are not this space. You will prevail. And as soon as there is anything at all, the fact that you prevail will be self-evident.

The insight to end all seeking is based on two unassailable facts — “there is something rather than nothing” and “I am”. No other knowledge can be known with the same level of certainty. These facts come from direct knowledge.

Since there is something, there can never truly have been nothing. The equations of science describe how a certain something can produce another thing. But as we follow this chain of cause and effect back to its source we approach an incomprehensible nothingness. Could the universe have appeared out of nothing?

“I am, but what am I?” The meditator follows a similar process of turning the mind to its source. I find that I cannot be a collection of memories, feelings, sensations or thoughts. Neither am I the body as a whole, nor a collection of neurons, not even the flickering electro-chemical activity associated with those neurons. I seem to be nothing at all! But can that be true?

Investigated thoroughly, the two unassailable facts both arrive at a seeming nothingness. Undefinable through science and imperceivable to the mind. But all this — the universe, life, experience — is undeniable proof that nothingness is not really nothing. It is full of potential and also the power to turn the potential into actual.

The expressions of reality are manifest, but reality itself remains unseen. And so it is with you. Whatever you may perceive, you are not what you perceive. And you do not depend on what is perceived. You are the unassailable factor which makes perception possible.

A mirror appears, but it is shattered. The point of light shines brightly among the shards. None of the reflections are true, yet none of them are false. Separate, they are flawed; together they describe the whole.

 

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