Thoughts Arise

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...

When the mind is facing annihilation,  Yet the heart is bursting with joy, You know you have arrived at that threshold,  Where Truth can no longer be denied. When you dare to admit, what is aware is not this mind, body or even “I”,  Thoughts dissolve into understanding, the false identity cannot sustain its lie.    All manifestations are expressions of Reality,  And all interactions are Its will. All experience Its intimacy,  And pain and suffering the depth of Its goodwill. It alone has the capacity for sensing, perceiving, knowing,  For granting forms that passing, yet undeniable, touch of be-ing.   Photo from EurekAlert.org  

Sound waves impinge upon the ear. Delicate instrumentation translates the vibrations into electo-chemical signals. A cacophony of neurons fire, activating each other through charged ions. Only then is there experience; the magic of hearing . The vibrations of molecules and the subsequent activity of brain cells, somehow reflected as music. There is a delay between the time the sound reaches the body to when it is heard . So what is really heard cannot be said to be sound waves. Nor can it be called brain activity, because no conceivable instrument should feel the dance of charged ions inside a head as music originating from outside the head. Every experience is a deeply mysterious echo of activity within the body and the world. It is a ripple in some subtle dimension of spacetime, an afterimage of an event that has already happened, palpably felt through some miraculous law of nature. But the miracle is not just that there is experience. You see, both the body and the world have been ...

You are the event horizon between the unknowable and the known. A threshold beyond which all concepts break down. You can know all manner of things and actions. But if you think you know yourself, you have identified with thoughts and abstractions. Whatever you identify with is always phenomenal and hence unreal. But what you are is among the noumenal; firmly rooted in the real. Can you deny the self-knowledge which tells you "I AM"? That, shining brighter than all else, points to how this dream began. Beyond the horizon, towards the indivisible singularity. Towards the nondual nature of reality.   Photo from medium.com  

I am the darkness that was there before the light, I am the nothingness you spurn by day, yet yearn by night. You and I are inseparable; not two, For reality is singular; this you already know to be true. We may seem like opposites to the mind, But are simply facets of That which it seeks and cannot find. Next time you wake up and witness the stirring of life, Notice from where the body and mind arise. In that serene moment before all the trouble begins, Are you not identical to the void, that no-thing? Remember, what you have feared was never the dark, But what may appear within it, to rend you apart.   Photo from labroots.com  

There’s a knock at the door. You open it to find an oddly shaped, red object. You pick it up in curiosity. There’s a card next to it that you could have sworn wasn’t there a moment ago. It says, “This is yours”. You bring the object into the house and are contemplating it when there is another knock. A green one! “Yours truly,” says the card with this one. The odd looking shapes keep arriving. You begin to stack them around the house. Red ones titled “Opinions” in the master bedroom, green ones titled “Fantasies” in the lounge, blue ones titled “Memories” in the backyard, and those confusing multicolored ones called "Emotions" down in the basement. At some point you’re a bit fed up with all the knocking. The next object that arrives is promptly kicked out. The card attached to it swings open as it flies away, “Not mine!” How can all these things be yours if they are coming from a source unknown? Who is delivering them anyway? Poof! Your body has disappeared. “Ah, this must be...

Trace chemicals linger in the air. The wind blows them towards delicate sensors. A receptor fires off, then more in rapid succession. A chain reaction begins. Electrical charges relay the signal from one node to the next, activating them at an incredible rate. It is like a flash of lightning in the darkness of night, illuminating one intricate path among the myriad possibilities of the rest. Spacetime seems to shift. A child squats at the edge of a garden bed. The smell of freshly cut grass lingers in the air. The face of his grandmother smiles radiantly as she points at an earthworm wriggling in the soil. The reminiscence fades back into the present. An interaction of matter associated with electrical activity. A smell associated with a distant memory. The physical and the mental are inseparable. Asleep now, but brain activity spikes. He is a woman waiting in the backseat of a car. Feeling vulnerable, she locks the door. The scene outside the window begins to shift and she realises th...