WHAT IS REALLY HAPPENING?
Question: When you say thought is not real, nothing is happening are you talking on the ultimate level? When the alarm rings, I have to get up and go to work, that is real, that is happening, right? What is really happening?
Reply: So the alarm rings.
Could we say that a thought arises that says: The alarm rang?
And then the thought arises: I must get up and get ready to go to work.
And then images may appear about driving in traffic.
And maybe a thought may arise about your neighbor and his barking dog.
And so on…
What is it that is real?
The thought may arise: I am brushing my teeth, I am making breakfast.
What is really happening?
One could say cooking breakfast is happening. But how do you know that cooking breakfast is happening?
Thought says so.
What if thought is silent?
What would ‘cooking breakfast’ be in the absence of thought?
Friend: Cooking breakfast happens on its own
Reply: How do you know that?
Friend: That is what appears to be happening
Reply: Is it thought that says so? Ok, a thought appears that says: ‘Breakfast is happening of its own’
How does thought know that?
The thought appears to you. On what basis are we certain that thought knows something about you or about breakfast?
We all know that I am the knower of the thought. Thought is known. I am the knowingness.
On what basis do we agree that thought knows? That thought is knowing?
Friend: My question is when you go to work, there are practical things we do.
Reply: That is what I am looking at. Let us not rush in saying that there are practical things we are doing.
All we know is that we are perceiving thought. One thought after another. Thought says this and that is what is happening.
What if thought is empty? Then what is really happening?
Up to now, all we know is that there is a series of thoughts. One after the other.
These thoughts don’t know what is happening. Since we know the thoughts but the thoughts have no knowledge of their own.
Thoughts have no idea of what is happening and they are not a reliable means or vehicle for me to determine what is really happening.
I know the thought ‘I love my mother’ but the thought does not know me.
Thought does not know what perceives it.
Knowingness belongs to that that knows the thought, that conceives and perceives it
Therefore the zillion thoughts you had during the day have no knowingness of their own. They are empty.
Yet there is something happening. What is it that is happening, truly happening?
Friend: Something appears to be happening.
Reply: Yes, appears to be happening. But that does not imply actually happening. You may have the thought of being a bird. It appears (in the thought) that you are flying, that something (called flying) is happening.
We are confusing impression with reality.
We are not talking about the ‘impression’ that there is something happening. Your question is referring to what is actually happening.
Not an impression.
I would agree with you that there are impressions of things happening, thought impressions. Millions of them.
Like during the night dreams you may travel 10,000 miles in five minutes. There is an impression that you have traveled.
The question is what is actually happening.
If you really want to look at what is actually happening, Then we cannot go to thought for the answer.
Because thought with tell you what ‘seems’ to be happening and not what is actually happening.
Where do we go if we do not go to thought in order to answer the question: ‘What is actually happening’?
Where do we go?
I would suggest that we don’t go anywhere.
We stay right here, right now and we look at what is it that is real, right here, right now.
After all, the question is arising right here, right now and requires an answer right here, right now.
In fact, there is nowhere to go.
What is actually happening has to be actual with 100% certainty and not probably happening.
What is it that we have 100% certainty of right now?
Nothing.
But this nothing is not an empty nothing. Not a relative nothing. It is an absolute nothing.
Absolute nothing is made out of awareness/consciousness/presence/knowingness that is absolute. Not a concept.
The nothing that I am talking about, you cannot think of it. It is the nothingness that is fullness, so full that there is nothing left outside. No outside and no inside.
It is Sat-Chit-Ananda
You could say that while thought is empty of knowingness, consciousness is all knowingness.
The emptiness of thought is an emptiness of knowingness. Thought is knowingness-empty and mind-impression full. Thought is make believe knowingness.
It has no knowingness in it. It does not know you, does not know the world. In that way, it is empty.
Consciousness is empty of separation. In other words when there is no separation, there is no dual reality and there is no other substance but wholeness, then you are beyond empty and full.
You could say that consciousness is empty but in an absolute sense. Empty/full. Absolute fullness/emptiness as one. Emptiness and fullness meet in/as consciousness and die into it.
So you question, your initial question: Thought is empty and yet there is something happening. You’re right. But what is happening is not to the alarm clock or going to work. What is truly happening is not what appears.
It is consciousness. That does not appear.
Not a mind impression.
That is the real happening. A happening that is not happening. A non-happening that is happening.
Beyond happening and non-happening.
When you look at thought to tell you what is actually happening, you are looking in the wrong direction. You are looking at the mind.
The mind will tell you what seems to be happening. A story. A caricature of what is really happening.
This is a profound question.
If thought has a dream quality, like clouds or mist, and if thought is not knowing, then what is really happening?
Even if what is appearing right now may be a dream, there is a reality that perceives it. It is not a thought that perceives the dream. A thought does not perceive another thought.
That reality is the real happening.
But it not the happening of the mind.
It is a big, big happening. In religious terms you could say it is God happening.
Universal consciousness.
Whatever it is that perceives this perception is what is happening.
THAT is what we refer to as I. The reality of the Self.
It is not phenomenal like you perceive a tree, a thought, a bodily sensation. It is not phenomenal.
It is noumena. Formless.
Out of the formlessness of the Self all dream forms appear. It is said God is infinite creativity, Infinite potential.
Creates, perceives and dissolves out of its infinite freedom.
There is no external God. There is but one reality.
To know reality, you have to go to reality itself and not to thought.
The reality of consciousness, and not the reality of the concept. The concept dissolves in its source.