Before the known and before the knower is reality. Our central problem is the veil of illusion, self-exuded like a spiderweb, in which we take ourselves to be a body-mind apart from and within an external world. This external world begins beyond our soft shell of skin and extends past the reach of our senses and the tools we have invented to enhance them. This is what we have been taught from our earliest memory, and what we accept without question, atomic particles and quantum theory notwithstanding. We have stepped onto the screen and become part of the movie. How can we break this spell when amnesia belies its existence?
"As long as you believe that only the outer world is real, you remain its slave. To become free, your attention must be drawn to the "I am," the witness. Of course, the knower and the known are not two, but to break the spell of the known the knower must be brought to the forefront. Neither is primary, both are reflections in memory of the ineffable experience, ever new and ever now, untranslatable, quicker than the mind." N.M.
So what happens is, concentration on "I am" turns on the theater lights, perhaps gradually as with a dimmer switch, the movie fades, we rub our eyes and as we do so the theater walls cave in, the ceiling dissolves into sky, into atmosphere misting up from planet earth, a speck of dust in the cosmic whirlwind, the wind but a motion arising from stillness, the dust dwarfed and our self pulverized, eyeless, just the seeing without seer or seen. Whether you want it or not that's the way things are. But you do want it, deep down, for there lies freedom.
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