Is it all an Illusion?
Temples in India are massive, majestic, extravagant; revealing sophisticated architecture, advanced engineering, superior technology. Could people have built it? They appear to be the work of something greater. Manifestation perhaps? The magnitude of everything around us is mindboggling. Much of it was present on earth before our arrival and will remain after our demise. This provokes further questions such as:
· Could all of this be real?
· Is the world real?
· Is it all an illusion?
I was confused and puzzled by some of these thoughts, questions and mysteries a short while back. I took to research and more research which oddly directed me to contemplation, introspection and self-examination. In short, I came to learn that to understand the mysteries surrounding us we need to go within. We need to understand ourselves from within before we attempt to understand anything outside ourselves. I embarked on yet another search. A crucial element of this search is “silence”. Spending time in silence is imperative to experience progress and achieve results on a journey of this nature.
In addition to the above questions I was also perplexed by something an evolved one left me with some years ago; “never forget” he said “we are all one”. I think I understood that on a theoretical level, nothing more.
Who am I?
Who am I?. Much is bandied about around this question. On the one hand we can justify that we are this or that; on the other hand we are relentlessly schooled around dropping the “I, Me or Mine” identities. This takes perpetuating an identity crisis far beyond the teenage years. Through research, effort and a process of self-discovery, I learned the following (this is scribed from a personal perspective):
Personal identity or a personal state is a sense or expression of identity and is generally misunderstood.
Whoever I think I am, whenever thoughts arise or when they are spoken; that is not me.
That is not my voice, the real me does not have a voice.
The “real me” is simply just aware.
Hence “awareness” is my true identity.
This identity of “awareness” cannot be labelled hence “I, me, mine, my” does not exist.
“I, me, mine, my” makes me a person and as such I function as a person.
However, I am not a person, the real me is simply awareness.
The real me (awareness) is required to just “observe”.
When thoughts arise, for example around sadness or misery
I am required to see it, observe it, notice it; it needs no words
That identity “awareness” does not speak, does not need words and does not say anything.
As a witness, it just observes.
Hence I don’t know who I am, I just know that I am, so let me just be.
This view is supported by the teachings of Maharishi Ramana and Sunny Sharma (Personal Mastery).
This discovery of “who am I” brings one closer to understanding the concepts of duality and non-duality.
Duality and Non Duality
Relative to the questions that bothered me I needed to understand the concept of duality and non-duality from two perspectives.
As per the image above, we come to appreciate the existence of Brahman, hosting or one with souls of all kinds, i.e. all living beings. We are all within “one” system in the universe. When seeing others we are seeing ourselves in their shapes. There is no separation. This is non-duality “oneness”. This clarified and gave credence to the profound wisdom of “never forget, we are all one”.
The image above indicates the existence of the true self and the mind/body as two separate entities, which is fundamentally misunderstood as such. It is better understood as follows:
There is only the true self, non-duality (one).
There is no true self and mind/body; i.e. duality.
The true self is within silence, awareness.
The mind/body ego self from thoughts and voice.
We need to operate from the true self.
This knowledge around our real identity, the true self and the mind/body brings us closer to grasping the notion of reality or illusion for oneself. This is explicated in the post that follows
Is the World Real or Is it all an Illusion? Part 2.
