73. Presence, Absence and You

It is not very easy, to understand how we perceive anything. Let us take an object called  X. When X is present to the seeing, we perceive its presence. Once an idea of X is firmed up, the perception of that X can from then on keep happening, whenever it feels like. Let us presume X was a car. As the car goes out of the seeing limits, it has disappeared. If anyone asks you, where the car ‘is’, you would tell him, just round the corner on the parallel road or something like that. So there is first a visual presence of the car, until it is absent to the seeing. Once it is absent to the seeing, it is present to memory or mind, what we call, ‘mentally present’. So all contents of seeing are first apparently present to the seeing and their physical absence then becomes a mental presence. This includes people and places as they seem to be mentally present somewhere, even though out of sight. So the universe being present is a combination of physical presence ( when present to ‘seeing’ ) and mental presence of all that is absent to the physical seeing.

Where is your son?, we say, he ‘is’ in the backyard. His ‘isness’  or presence is ‘fit-ted’ into physical or mental space.

If we close our eyes, the contents of physical seeing disappears and reappears in the seeing of it. So contents of seeing are present only in the seeing of it. Similarly, the rest of the universal space, including all that was seen in the past and likely to be seen in the future is floating abstractly somewhere in the mental space to be 'seen' in the thinking of it. Just like contents of seeing or physical presence of objects, ‘only’ appears in the seeing, contents of mental seeing of mental objects are available ‘only’ to the mental seeing. Mental seeing is actually thinking of the mental contents. Just like physical contents are absent when not seen, the mental contents are absent when not thought about them.

Duration or time also is such an object. A series of appearance and disappearance is ‘termed’ movement. There is no movement, other than appearing and disappearing. What disappears physically is made mentally present as a reference and compared to next physical presence, to make movement. Without ‘mind’ or mental help, there can be no movement. Physically, there is only appearing of fresh new scenes. We cannot make out the freshness of any new scene as we are caught up with mental presence, interfering with physical presence to make a ‘notion’ of change or movement.

So physical presence is what is perceived physically in the seeing and physical absence is mental presence, what is perceived mentally. It is very strange that we are able to perceive the universe mentally, as we have to assimilate all that is seen in the past and future, to make a perception of universe. In this case, when sitting in the room, that instant seeing is only for a fraction of a second and has to be assimilated with mental contents of a ‘life time’. The fractional content is physical and lifetime content is mental. In other words, the presence of  ‘your’ whole universe is purely mental with fractional or negligible physical presence. It does not sound very soothing that the universe is ‘mental’ or that there is ‘no’ physical universe.

So coming back to the point of presence, there is a physical presence of contents of seeing and mental presence of the same contents, when it ‘goes’ absent to the seeing. This means there is no complete absence of contents or a single content called X, unless it is absent to the seeing and absent to the thinking also. This means, if X is not thought about, it can be absent so totally that nothing need be discussed about X as if X was outside of time and space , physical or mental, out of universe.Therefore featuring anything, 'makes' it present and not featuring is out of the sphere of time and space.

Absence of mental content is called ‘fasting’ of the mind. All that physically disappears, including your body, when there is not seeing of it, like in sleep, must be present to the mind and that too in the thinking of it and not otherwise. So all that is featured, including time and contents of space is available only in the thinking or physical appearance of it. This being the game of MAYA, a combination of physical appearance and mental appearance makes the world that we perceive and there can be nothing outside of IT. Since we have no power to create physical appearance nor mental appearance, the notion of we, since perceived, must also be a featured content. This completes the MAYA, featuring the universe with a ‘me’ as if the centre of perception.

Since there is only contents of physical seeing and mental seeing as what is happening and there is a perceiving of it, because which we conclude that these contents ‘are’, the perceiving of the content gives it the 'isness' or presence and the contents are not separate from perceiving, The perceiving is the contents or what is happening and what is happening is the perceiving of it. If the perceiving of it is the symbol called ‘I am’ and is not separate from the contents perceived called what is happening, then what is happening is also ‘I am’. So there is only what is happening  or ‘I am’ which seem two sides of the same coin but in practice is one and the same . Perceiving is what is happening and what is happening is perceiving. Perceiving is a behaviour or capacity of ‘Presence’ making what is happening as physical presence or its absence as mental presence as if what is happening are the contents of Presence. If the material of what is happening is that of Presence and so is Perceiving as the power of the material of Presence, then all there is –is Presence, seeming to be what is happening or the Universe and such presence is ‘you’ or your nature, which all is as isness, acknowledging all that is- by being all that is as seeing and thinking of IT.