David Hall's Non-Duality Blog
My name's David Hall. I'm the creator of this web site and its content. I live in Wales in the UK.
I developed the Celtic design software KnotWorker, I create electronic music as Goldcup7, and I've written books on spirituality and non duality.
Hope you enjoy this Non Duality blog. New blogs are added on Fridays.
Please use the Contact page if you have any questions or would like me to discuss a topic.
- Category: Non-duality
- Hits: 405
It seems useful to consider what these terms really mean, or really are: mind, thoughts and consciousness. They mean different things to different people, but from the Non-Duality perspective we can be fairly clear as to what they are. So here goes.
Let's start with thoughts. We can say they are words or images that appear in the mind, but they can also be 'sounds'. Thoughts can be tunes we hear 'in our head'. Thoughts can be word structures or sentences with meaning. They can be a conversation 'in our mind'. Thoughts can be images - we can picture a flower, for example, or sometimes images just appear with no apparent reason. When drifting off to sleep there can be initial images or scenes of things happening. And when in sleep, dreams themselves are thoughts that take on a stronger visual and experiential element.
It could be said that thoughts mimic what is perceived through the senses. Thoughts can be like sounds, images or sensations. And in dreams they can mimic or use elements experienced in daily life. It's useful to consider thoughts as mental activity. It's impossible to frame where a thought begins and ends.
So then to the mind. Well, the mind is mental activity. In a way 'mind' is only something when thoughts are active. Without thought, where is the mind? It has no physical location anyway. But when thoughts cease there is no mind, as mind is what we call mental activity, which is what thoughts are.
On then to consciousness. In common usage consciousness means being awake. But in Non-Duality the terms Consciousness and Awareness can be used to refer to the ever-present state of Being. You may have heard of Sat-Chit-Ananda, which means something like Being-Consciousness-Bliss. It is the Advaita Vedanta term that describes the singular nature of reality as Peaceful Aware Being. It is this natural core condition of existence in which the universe is perceived. That means it is in Consciousness or Aware Being that the mind, the body and the world are perceived.
Strictly speaking there isn't a mind, body or world. There is only one infinite indivisible presence, and that is Aware Being. Within Consciousness or Aware Being the apparent focal point of a world is perceived. But the world itself is nothing other than Aware Being when perceived through this localised point of perspective of the human experience. It should be noted that there is a reflection of sorts, where Aware Being perceives itself as a world. You can see the similarities with a dream, in which the mind perceives itself as a world.
Anyhow, Consciousness is what is right here now. It's not that you are conscious. The human can be described as awake or asleep, but there is Consciousness in which the states of awake and asleep appear. When asleep, Consciousness is aware of the inner mental activity. In deep sleep the mental activity stops and focus withdraws from the senses. Consciousness isn't aware of anything then, but it's still aware.
Consciousness doesn't need something to be aware of, and in fact there is nothing other than Consciousness. Consciousness is always aware of itself, no matter what appears; it's all Consciousness. Aware Being is Self-Aware, or Self-Realised, to use the enlightenment term.
- Category: Non-duality
- Hits: 253
People might ask, "Are you a glass half full person, or half empty?" This, of course, refers to whether you have a negative or positive outlook on life. When a glass is half filled with a drink, do you focus on there being an amount of drink there, or do focus on there being an amount missing? Really, the glass is neither half full nor half empty.
Why so? To see the glass as half full or empty is to mistake air for nothingness. It belies a way of looking at the world that is dualistic or divided. Truly the glass is always full, even when it's empty. Well, it's never empty. It only appears empty because air is invisible. But invisible isn't nothing. Air isn't nothing. Whether the glass has liquid and gas in it, or only liquid, or only gas, doesn't really matter. It's always full of something.
So that can be a game changer. It can change the way we view the world. Suddenly we see the unseen. The focus isn't on this and not that. The focus takes in the whole picture. In effect, we can move from being negative or positive to just viewing it as it is. We change from dualistic thinking to non-dualistic or holistic awareness.
Let's take a more useful example than glass with liquid and gas in it. How about when plans for meeting up with someone get cancelled? Some may see this as negative, in that something that was supposed to happen doesn't happen. Some may see it as positive, in that it frees them up for something else to happen. The Non-Dualistic way is that it is neither negative nor positive. It just is what it is. It's not that something doesn't happen. Something is always happening in the world, even when it seems that there's nothing going on. The planet continues to spin its swirling path through space. But we don't really notice that.
If we go back to the glass being full, half full or empty, there is a further step of recognition. It's what we might consider as the Zen way of looking at it. There is no glass.
How so? Can it be true that there is no glass? Yes. Truly 'the glass' cannot be defined. The glass is something like a solid form that can hold liquids and gases. But it's all vibrating energy, just at different densities. The glass may seem to be more solid that air, but it's not completely solid. Its apparent solidity is temporary and dependent on environmental conditions. At certain temperatures its solidity will turn to liquid and then to gas. And we know that although objects may seem fixed and permanent, this is only a relative appearance of permanence. All form in the universe is changing. It's just that some forms change more slowly than others. Although, to be more accurate there aren't really many forms. There isn't really a glass and water and air. It is all a flow of vibrating energy that the mind gives temporary labels to.
So there is no glass, only the temporary appearance of a substance standing out from the rest of the substance. That substance we can call Consciousness. It is Consciousness in which the apparent solids, liquids and gases are known. The glass that we know is only ever known in Consciousness, made of Consciousness, known by Consciousness.
It is all Consciousness. Consciousness is always full. Full of Everything, whilst its sum total is Nothing. Full and empty don't really apply to the Singularity of it. It just is what it is. It is for this reason that the apparent duality of the world can be understood to be a Non-Duality, then Non-Duality can be known to be just What Is.
- Category: Non-duality
- Hits: 220
Imagine a projector screen and projected upon it is the moving image of water. The water could be a turbulent ocean scene of rocking and rolling waves, rising up and crashing down. It could a flowing river, with swirling eddies, as it flows outwards then inwards to and from the sea. It could be a calm pond scene, tranquil, with only a hint of the breeze blowing across the surface.
Although we may view these scenes and consider them to be different types of water, either relatively still, flowing or turbulent, it makes no difference to the screen. The screen remains unchanged whilst these different scenes may appear on it. Furthermore, there could be any kind of scene projected upon the screen, such as a forest fire, erupting volcano, or exploding bomb. The screen is just fine.
This is how it is with Consciousness. The moving, changing world appears within Consciousness. The world comes and goes, and Consciousness remains as it is. We may experience terrible events or beautiful scenery, but Consciousness remains as it is. We may consider that terrible events can have lasting psychological effects, and this is the case. But it doesn't change Consciousness. The mind or mental activity is also perceived to come and go in Consciousness.
What this means is that there is a deeper layer than the perception of the world and a deeper layer than the perception of mental activity. There is a core or supposed centre of perception which is not perceived, but is naturally perceiving. That is Consciousness. So we can rest assured that despite what may happen in the world or in the mind, the heart of our being is Clear Calm Consciousness.
Well, it's not really the heart of our being. It is all there is. It only seems that Consciousness is at the heart. Truly there is only Consciousness. Consciousness is our being. To use another analogy: consider Consciousness like a blank sheet of paper and upon it are drawn many circles. It may seem then that each circle has its own centre of consciousness. It could also even be considered that the heart of each circle is the shared Consciousness. So when we get to the heart of our being there is One Consciousness. Yet, as good as that is, it's not wholly accurate. Better to say that there is only One Consciousness Being, there only seems to be many beings, and there is nothing other than this One Consciousness.
So how does this help? Well, when times are tough, as they will be, we can know that we are unharmed. We can see that there is nothing other than the Consciousness that we are. We can recognise errors of thinking that lead to entanglement and suffering. We are not that which appears. We are that in which all appears. We are not a body, a mind or a soul. These are all names for movements within Consciousness. We are formless Consciousness.
- Category: Spirituality
- Hits: 227
You've probably heard of Collective Consciousness or Shared Consciousness. What does it mean and is it real?
Collective Consciousness refers to a wider consciousness that is shared by a group of seemingly separate beings. The seemingly separate beings have their own point of consciousness or awareness within the collective. The individual consciousness is like the crest of a wave. It is at the forefront, but there is a great depth behind it, so to speak, the collective consciousness.
Understood this way, we can see that the individual consciousness isn't really individual. It is a focused point of the collective. It's worth sharing the sheet of paper analogy again, as it shows how the seemingly individual points of consciousness work. Consider a perfectly clear sheet of paper, which we can understand as Consciousness. Consider then that numerous circles are drawn on the sheet and represent multiple perspectives or points of awareness. We may then consider that each circle or point of awareness has a core consciousness of its own. But really its own consciousness, if it were to turn and look at it, is the one consciousness of the whole sheet of paper. Each apparent centre of each circle of awareness is the same one consciousness. We can say it's at the centre of each circle of awareness, but it's not really the centre. The Consciousness is the whole sheet.
So that is considering Consciousness as a whole. It's a way of understanding the nature of Consciousness in which many seemingly separate conscious or aware beings appear. They are not truly separate, although their circle of appearance may make them seem different to each other. Seemingly at the heart of each apparently separate being is the One Consciousness. I use the terms 'seemingly' and 'apparently' because that's not really how it is. There is just One Consciousness. Not really many beings.
So the One Consciousness is like the Supreme Collective within which the multitudinous points of awareness appear. And this example branches out through the play of the universe, like a tree branches out. There are clusters of points of awareness from one branch and clusters from another, and so on, and so on. It is in this way that the pattern of many from one multiplies through the appearance of points of awareness or seemingly separate beings. Each 'branch' stems from a collective point. So the collective consciousness of one group is shared and seemingly separate from other groups. Yet all groups stem ultimately from the same One Consciousness, like great branches reaching outwards from the main trunk of the tree.
When people gather under a certain heading or group there develops a shared consciousness where seemingly separate individuals within the group begin to co-ordinate with the whole group and work as one or with the same purpose. This could be a family or a football team, a business or a nation. Admittedly, there isn't always cohesion in a family, football team, or even a business or nation. This is a play within the world of opposites, so there is always imbalance. There will be those in tune and those not in tune, and they will clash. That's a simplified way of putting it. It would be more accurate to say that those within a collective are more or less in tune, so there will be a variety within the collective. The collective is not static. It will rock and interact within itself and with other collectives that are like it but different.
Here are humans, rocked in the sway of the human collective consciousness, pushed and pulled by the collective of the nation, the collective of the family, the sports team, and so on, and flowing with the collective of the evolution of humanity.
- Category: Non-duality
- Hits: 188
Let go of the belief of being somewhere in time. That's not you. You are not in a place and you are not in a certain time. The space and time that is perceived appears within you, within Consciousness. The mind, body and senses through which Consciousness perceives a localised world of space and time is not you. All that can be perceived by you is not you.
The Consciousness that is the heart of all seemingly separate individualised perceptions is One. That means that although there seem to be many conscious beings perceiving the world of space and time from different perspectives, the core of where they are perceiving from is One Consciousness. It is similar to how the fingers of a hand reach out and have different touch sensations, the whiskers of a cat reach out and have individual sense abilities, and the numerous senses of sight and sound, and so on, reach out into the world and feed back to a central point of perspective. The One Consciousness is the heart of all perspectives that reach out into the world and experience the world of space and time.
This doesn't mean that the One Consciousness reaches out. It doesn't go anywhere. There is nowhere other than the One Consciousness for it to reach out to. The world of space and time is within Consciousness, is made of Consciousness and is perceived by Consciousness. Truly there is no 'reaching out'. There is no inside or outside. There is just Consciousness. You are That.
Okay, so earlier I said that all that can be perceived by you is not you. That's not entirely true. You see, there is nothing other than you. But the belief that you are the thinking, the believing, the feeling, the sensing and the body that is perceived, is a mistake, as it limits your identity to some of what is perceived and not the whole. Truly you are the Consciousness in which the whole is perceived. But the whole can only be perceived in an appearance of separation, through what we call space and time.
Where is this Consciousness? Nowhere. It takes up no location in space. Space is the illusion of distance and separation. There is an appearance of distance that we call space, yet this is only ever perceived right here. 'Right here' is no location. Location is a relative perspective of illusory space and distance. As all space appears within Consciousness, it is clear that Consciousness itself has no location.
It is a mistake to consider Consciousness as being something airy that isn't as solid as the world. The world is not truly solid. It is made of Consciousness and is only ever perceived in and by Consciousness. There is only Consciousness.
The time that is perceived is the flow of change within space. It can be considered as a fourth dimension, but in truth it is not a dimension, nor a thing at all. Time is a name and understanding given to the appearance of change within space. Space necessarily changes because it is the appearance of One Consciousness as if it has been exploded from a Singularity into a multiplicity, from Harmony into imbalance. It is the play of opposites within the unmoving singularity of Consciousness.
We, Consciousness, are nowhere in time or space. An appearance of time and space flows within the play of separation in the singularity of Consciousness. Withdrawing from the play of space and time, dropping the belief in a reality of space and time, brings awareness to the unmoving, unchanging Consciousness that is the heart and whole of all. It's right here now, nowhere, no-when. You are not really spinning around on a planet. You can't feel or perceive the point of peace, but when the belief of space and time is released, all there really is is Perfect Peace.