46. How to go about self analysis.

Normally we hear these statements in non duality, that, what we think we are, is not what we are and what we are, is not what we think we are. What does it mean. They also say that, one has to do self enquiry, on their own. What is shared here is the normal question answers, one puts onto himself and gets his own answers, as in thoughts, and there is some clarity, after which, further questions can be thought about. What is shared here is also that, one can take the enquiry from here onwards, so that a few years of enquiry could be saved, which one can consume, from starting from scratch and arriving till here.  The search for self can progress from here onwards and there would be some clarity, what one is seeking for. If you begin from scratch, it would be quite some time, before one can get hold of what one wants to seek, even as seeking seems to be gripping the mind.

Seeking is self enquiry. An enquiry, where one wants to find out what or who exactly one is. What does this mean. Do we not know who we are. We are already who we are. But what does this mean. Is this not enough. NO.

To start with, we think that we are human beings with free will. We can see, we can hear, smell etc, and we can think. All this is incorrect. The one that see’s, hear’s, etc is not the ‘you’ or this body –mind entity,  with a free will. Is not the human form that perceives all this. Its more complex or simpler than that.

Imagine you slept and didn’t get up the next day. You are then dead. Cant see, cant hear, cant taste, useless. Just useless. So what was driving you to feel alive and live and see and hear? Life. This is correct. So are you the body or life?. You think that you are this body which has a life. We think that each body has a separate life. What is this life. Our knowledge of life is what we are taught. But we are taught from a point of view that there is a separate life for each body and that we are in control of our own life. However, we are not taught, what this ‘we’ is-  that controls our ‘life’. Is life the controller or is ‘Me’ the controller. Does life include me or does it exclude ‘me’. This is tricky. We think that we are an ‘entity’ that is separate from the life that we have, and we have some control on our life. We think that our life is our behavior, manners, intelligence etc., and this entity called ‘me’, is something outside this behavior, manners, intelligence etc that can be used to control our lifestyle. So the controller is the entity. That’s what we think. What is the nature of this controller?. Where is it residing?, what is its form?. Is it an intelligence that can control our individual intelligence?. Is it an intelligence that can control ‘our’ free will? What the hell is it. How do I find out, who or what or where is this ‘I’. Do I start from a point that this ‘I’ or controller, is inside this body. Can we ignore the possibility of this controller ‘I’ being outside this body?, How do we figure this out? Its not easy. It seems impossible. It seems madness. We have been operating in this world for many many years, without actually analysing who we are. Is this a fact. Yes, it is so.

Till now what is the clarity. Let us fix up once and for all, that life is required for the body to operate. So we need to know what life is. We can forget about the body, being an ‘I’. Body is inert, without life. It is unfit even to decay without life. Life is required for growth. Positive as well as negative. Growth from birth to old age is positive and from death to decay or nothing is also positive for evolution but considered negative due to decay being an un-acceptability as life.. Life seems to be energy. Until all matter of the body is converted to pure energy, either by cremating to burying or rotting or change of form or whatever happens. Energy cannot be destroyed. So energy will remain as energy and change form. It will change from human form to worm form, if buried, or into chemical form like CO2 or H2O if cremated. However, life seems to be somewhere or other and not easily graspable as some concept.

We take another route. Other than life being necessary for sensing, - like see-ing, hear –ing etc, and acting the body, there are also ‘thoughts’ that are known. How do thoughts form? Are ‘we’ forming thoughts? Are we taught any process how to form thoughts. Or are thoughts forced on to us from outside. This seems correct. Thoughts are outside our control. Thoughts are memory, ideas, imaginations that control the body or 'us'.. Without thoughts, we are unconscious –so to say. It is only the thoughts, that seem to be active all the time. It is the thoughts that seem to keep our continuity. That makes our happy moments and our sad moments. Its thought that makes our experience of day to day life in a storyline. Thoughts happen to us. Who or what is this ‘us’, who knows the thoughts?. There is a knowing of thought appearing. But is there a knower or only a thought. Who is the thinker of the thought.?

All enquiry stops here for a very very long time. This is the most solid clue. Its easy to imagine that I am the see-er of object and hear-er of sounds. We have been thought so. We are made to be a subject of the so called objective world.  However we are we also an object in our own seeing of the world. We  are THE TENTH MAN, If so who is the subject to which we are the object. The enquiry ends really here. What is the truth of this subject- object world. This game of self enquiry now goes back into oneself. Searching outside of us ends here, as there aren’t any good clues to go by. Then a search inside starts, a search for ‘who’ we actually are. This is right direction also. The search within.

Take a sentence – I hear sound. Seems logical. Is sound apart from the hearing of it. Is hearing apart from the hearer or ‘I’. Is the subject apart from its object?. That’s the point. No hearing automatically means, no sound and also no hearer. So all there is a ‘no-one’ hearing, split into ‘I’ and sound, to make it, I hear sound. This sentence is difficult to digest. A no-one is difficult to grasp. Such a no-one as this intelligence that is doer of all doing is 'Life'.

Language is duality. Language is ‘life’s creation to generate a sens of an individual to a body, by making a feel of a thinking mind separate from the outer world. It makes a subject - object world. It creates a feeling of positive and negative as separate existence. Absence of one is the presence of the other. But, language made words for absence as well as presence and made it feel like, we can conceptualise a presence and absence and  have a feel of both being present and both independent of each other. For example light and darkness. We think that we can see ‘light’ and we can see darkness. We think the we can hear sound and we can hear silence and so on. But what you cant see is called darkness and what you can't hear is called silence.  So what you are is called subject and what is not you, that is called object. But if you are not, then all objects are simply not. So this becomes a paradox.  

All objects are called presence of forms. Including sound forms and thought forms. So absence of forms must be a subject. In fact  ‘The’ subject. Our body is also a form or an object to the subject that is seeing it. So if you eliminate all forms- visual, audible, thoughts etc, all sensations, all emotions etc, then what is left is pure subject called life, that was capable of cognising all these objects. That’s what is a ‘Neti Neti’ approach. 

We cognise presence of objects -as objects and absence of objects as space. Space also is an object in the knowing. So absence of space is what is left as subject, called pure knowing capacity or a simple nothing. Nothing is not an absence of something. Nothing is the absence of space or double absence of something. Nothing is pure knowing and nothing is what we are as life or knower. The knower of knowing is life. Since it doesn’t fall in subject object category, we say, all there is- is pure knowing or nothing or ‘I am’. This is pure subjectivity. If there are no objects, there cannot be a subject and all there can be is a potential to know, in case, there is an object to know. Now imagine your body has been introduced into this nothing. This is still an object known in the knowing. Now put all other objects like houses, persons etc. So all there are is only objects and then its knowing. Now, you put some thought objects to interpret that one of the object is a subject of all other objects. That makes a subject- object world, using thoughts. So thoughts have made a subject out of one body so as to make feel that others are its object. This feels includes a make feel thought type called entity or ‘me’ to a body.  Almost all thought, spin through a ‘me’ loop. Creating an illusive subject at this end. So the ‘me’ is purely a thought material. So there isn’t a ‘me’ with a free will. There are merely thoughts which stress a free will in the thinking itself. The stressing makes it seem real.

Now we have made subject as ‘nothing’ and objects as forms, including the body and mind. This should now be easy to grasp. Now what is the relation of nothing and something. This is intuitive. We give reality to our thought. If we see our mother in front, our thought  process or a mental relationship gives reality to a mother ‘form’. There isn’t a mother there, or a friend there, or an enemy there, Those thoughts are here. There – are only forms, talking forms. Thoughts  put a mental relation to this body as me and that body as mother and seen by this thought entity as ‘its’ mother. So the thought structure, made of dream material or a ‘nothing’ gives rise to a feel of reality as ‘mother’. The whole thing is mental. The ‘me’ and the mother, both are mental and not real. There isn’t anything real, other than ‘nothing’ which can nether be real nor unreal, as no objectivity can be attached to it. Me is a mental relation to this body and mother is a mental relation to that body and the game of reality is on.

Take another angle. Take Fire and the Flame. Fire is energy, material or structure of energy is nothing. However, fire seems to appear as a flame. We cannot separate the fire from the flame. We have been taught words like fire and flame to feel separate. Fire is the subject appearing as flame or object. So the subjectivity is the essence and objectivity is its appearance. What is all forms were subjectively nothing and appearance wise or objectively forms.  We now have ‘nothing’  appearing as energy which is fire as well as a flame. Since nothing is subjectivity, beyond space and time, it is timeless and spaceless. However, all appearance seems to be depicted in space and time. Where is the existence of time. Where is the past and future – Nowhere at all, other than in the mind. Even the mind is an illusion. There isn’t any solid mind.. All is an illusion. So if all the past  and all the future is an illusion, how can a spec of present be real. So there isn’t a reality or any present. The reality is nothing however appearing everything using  time and space as its illusive co-ordinates giving rise to things and events in duration. So nothing subjectively is everything objectively. There is no place for a me and a you until now. So me and a you is the language of life, when life speaks bodies, as if one was subject and others are its objects. This is an automatic unfolding. The past disappears or dies into the present which again seems to die into the future. Or else, the present is continuously changing its presence to appear as new new forms or scenery. So this nothing seems to be so powerful and alive as to appear as everything, everywhere and always. This always is not a past, present and future. This always is a now. It will always be now. Time cannot be other than now. This life is always here and make feels everywhere, always now and make feels all the time. Its speciality is its illusive space and time which has no perceiving quality in itself, but, always seems to exist. One cannot take the feel of – of an image or concept of no-space and no-time. One cannot conceptualise infinity or that which cannot be made finite in space and time. Its creates a feeling of a me, an individual entity, with freewill and choice, even though the body is lived, creating the magic of a separate person and the world. Liberation is the knowing, that the Self is none other than ourselves,, as pure knowing, a knowing being, as may you a call it, knowing by being it, and being by knowing it.

So all there is –is life, its objective nature, is ‘being’ forms in the seeing of it, sounds in the hearing of it and so on, or universe in the perceiving of it.

So all there is to know is simply that, the ‘me’ and the ‘you’s’  and others and objectively appearances, which is a ‘dressed up’ act of ‘nothing’. So your wife, or Guru, or statue or chappal is all ‘one’ which is nothing it its essence, appearing objective as all that, signifying nothing that there are  believed to be. All belief’s are belief’s and nothing is true other than being ‘nothing’ in itself. There is no point in telling others to see a point, as the subject is the object and object is the subject, all one, and ‘nothing’ as God.   

The whole perception, made of ‘nothing’, is dream like, being perceived, but by no-one, and that no-one is knowing itself by being all.    

So all there is – is life.

You can take up your personal enquiry from here, until you feel ‘nothing’  or your sense of individual entity dies, which is the ‘dying’ of the ‘me’ before a clinical dying.