Question:
I realize that there is no chooser. I look at my experience and I don’t find anybody making a choice. It is just a thought. But this does not seem to change anything in my life. So what if there is no chooser? Where does this understanding lead?

 
Reply:
The understanding that there is no chooser goes to the core of the sense of separation. The belief that I am a separate entity is mortally wounded by that understanding.
The change caused by this understanding may be subtle or may be very obvious.
This understanding reveals what you are not.
Meaning it reveals that you are not a separate entity. That you are not a mortal body mind.
But this understanding does not reveal what you are.
Until the full revelation of your true nature as borderless universal consciousness, peace and happiness is not established since there remains separation… as the witnessing consciousness perceiving an outside world, body mind.
The initial understanding that you are not a separate entity, is not to be underestimated.
Like a tender seedling, when tended to, it grows into an oak tree.
The final revelation reveals your true nature as the glorious Self, soaked through and through in peace and happiness.
It’s a joyful celebration.

 

F.G. : Wait Magdi, are you saying that first there is the realization that you are not the separate self you imagined to be and then there is the realization that you are consciousness: “as the witnessing consciousness perceiving an outside world, body mind”?But still there is more, because this latter means there is still separation, the separation of a witnessing consciousness?

Reply: F.G. The initial realization that there is no separate chooser, is the witnessing state. There is still has a sense of separation. It is the revelation of what you are not.

F.G. : Yes Magdi. But if there is no sense any more of a separate self, then who are you but that which brought out the sense of separate me in the first place? And now it is not there any more, could there be two?

Reply: The sense of separation is not completely annihilated by the initial understanding that there is no separate chooser. There is still separation in the identification as consciousness.

F.G.: So, after this initial understanding, who is going to go further in the total and final establishing in truth?

Reply: This question assumes a who. This question assumes an entity, that is progressing or regressing. This entity is imagined. After the initial understanding, there is a maturing process, and ripening process. It is all consciousness.

F.G. : No separate self, not chooser, obviously what is left is You as the Self or consciousness. So, where is this witnessing-separation you talk about?

Reply:  It is the subtle attachment to ‘no one’. It is the revelation becoming a conceptualization. An objective world body mind remains as separate from consciousness. There is a wavering that continues between happiness and unhappiness.

F.G. : So you mean that in all cases, once it is seen that a separate self is not real, an attachment to “no one” takes place? Can you affirm that if there is still an objective world body mind, then there is still confusion and the understanding is not complete?

Reply: That is true in most cases. In a few cases, lots of contemplation has already occurred and very little vasanas remain. In those rare cases, the post enlightenment process is quick. In those rare cases, the post enlightenment process is quick.
And yes, perceiving an objective world is still duality. The final understanding and experience is that all is the Self. All is consciousness.

F.G. : All is the Self yes. But you better watch where you walk otherwise you might fall and get hurt. An objective world is still there and it has gravity laws!
The world is illusory;
Brahman alone is real;
Brahman is the world.
Shankara

Reply: Of course F.G.
I am not talking about the body becoming stupid. The body has intelligence and intricate systems that aim at maintaining its safely…. For a while, of course.
I am talking about ignorance… The belief that I am the body.

F.G. : Could you say I am the body also? Consciousness is all there is, so everything including a body is part of consciousness! Sensations, feelings, thoughts appear in consciousness as consciousness and the body mind is part of this expression.

Reply:  The body is a concept. Only consciousness is real. Only consciousness IS. What the mind refers to as body is from the mind’s habit to separate objects. The mind is stuck on the myriad forms that is creates via its labeling mechanism.

C.A. : Here you are inadvertently, suggesting the need for a separate self to both acquire this same ‘understanding’ (that of not really being a separate self), and to also have this suggested required ‘revelation’. So that this ‘you’ too might have the same kind of ‘joyful celebration’. Is that it?
In this way, it is thereby suggested that this is your ‘personal experience’, which gives you the authority to tell another that this is something that they too also need. I question whether ‘understandings, and ‘special experiences’, ordained by some self-proclaimed authority, does anything more than create a kind of spiritual greed, and an intensification of the struggle of ‘personal becoming’?

Reply: C.A. It is not the separate self that acquires the understanding that there is no chooser. This revelation is to and from consciousness and not to and from the imagined separate self.
This initial understanding does not to reveal the full glory of consciousness since there remains a separation between consciousness as the witness and the world body mind.
The only ‘author-ity’ of the reality of the Self. Personal authorities are illusory. Spiritual greed is one of the mishaps along the way. It is an unhappy mind event.

F.R.:  “The initial understanding that you are not a separate entity, is not to be underestimated. Like a tender seedling, when tended to, it grows into an oak tree.”
Nice

C.A. : Consciousness knows itself as Being-Knowing-Bliss only. I Am.
Being, as the I Am, doesn’t regard itself as a limited, identified, personal self. It knows itself as the totality of Consciousness, without the limitation of separation with any particular identification that results from the imaginations of thought.
Pure Being includes Witnessing, that is the Chit in Sat. It is not a separate self-identified position. It is part of the whole Unified Mix of Oneness. Chit rarefied is the Awareness of Being, which is beyond Consciousness – the primary illusion.
“… Awareness sees Consciousness, but Consciousness cannot see Awareness …” (Nisargadatta, paraphrased).
The ‘full glory of Consciousness’ appears to be in the purity of its immaculate Being, and it’s spontaneous dissolution as Awareness only, and its final and ultimate return to Absolute Nothingness? Its Source.

F.G. : Where is the yardstick? How to know if someone is totally free or not from the distance?

Reply: You know it when you are established in causeless peace and happiness.

B.C : The realization of no separate chooser is the end of guilt, as well as pride.
A beautiful song flows through me and I appear to sing, yet I am an innocent bystander, and witness to the phenomenon. I’m just a passenger on this bus.

Reply: You are so much more than a passenger on this bus B.C.
You are all passengers, all buses, all songs.
You are the singer of all songs.

B.C. : Yes, Magdi. Of course you’re right.
There is always the question of who one is referring to with “I.”
I was referring to the one who would grab for the steering wheel. I notice that the song can happen without any of his effort or input.

Reply: Imaginary effort.