Most people feel that being a body is their most fundamental experience and that being aware is a faculty that they, as this body, possess. In this essay, we’ll discover that our experience is the opposite. Being aware is your most fundamental experience and as this awareness, the body is something you have or experience.
Your primary experience is not the experience of being a body. Your primary experience is that of being aware. In other words, you are aware before you are aware of being a body or having a body.
This recognition that what you essentially are at the deepest level is the fact of being aware rather than being a body is the single most important realisation that anyone can ever make in their life. All the sorrow that people feel on the inside and all the conflict between individuals, communities and nations on the outside can be traced back ultimately to this mistaken identity.
All that is necessary is to notice that you are aware and that being aware is your primary experience. The body is what you know. It is not what you are. Consciousness, or awareness, is what you are. It cannot be known objectively. You cannot be what you know, and you cannot know as an object what you are.
The experience of the body is a flow of sensations and perceptions. These are what you know. They are what you experience. They are not what you are. You are the one that knows them, that is aware of them. You are the fact of being aware or awareness itself.
Our entire world culture and all the sorrow and conflict that attend it is founded on this overlooking of the fact of being aware or awareness itself. In other words, it is founded on the assumption that what you essentially are is a body that has consciousness as one of its attributes.
So the first thing is just to notice. That’s all. Just notice that your primary experience is the experience of being aware. By saying ‘your primary experience is the experience of being aware’, I don’t mean to imply that it is you as a person whose primary experience is being aware. I mean that it is you, awareness, whose primary experience is being aware. In other words, you, awareness, are aware of yourself before you are aware of any other thing, just as the sun illuminates itself before it illuminates any other planet.
It is you, awareness, that are now having the experience of being aware. And that is your primary experience, your most fundamental experience. You are aware of yourself. You, awareness, are aware of yourself before you are aware of any other thing.
So all that is necessary is to cease giving your exclusive attention to the content of experience – your thoughts, feelings, sensations, perceptions. Don’t fight with the content of experience, particularly with your thoughts. Just let them go. Come back to yourself. Take a step back from the content of your experience to yourself, to the awareness that knows it, that knows your experience.
Remember yourself. Return to yourself. Recognise yourself. Come back to yourself.
There is nothing strange, mysterious, unfamiliar or spiritual about the fact of being aware or awareness itself. On the contrary, being aware or awareness itself is the most intimate, familiar experience, if we can call it an experience, there is.
To believe that awareness or consciousness is mysterious, unfamiliar or spiritual is like someone who watches a movie and believes that the screen is mysterious or cannot be seen or cannot be found, just because it does not appear as an object in the movie. It’s like believing that the space in the room in which you are currently sitting is strange or mysterious, something that is never experienced, simply because it cannot be seen, touched, tasted, heard or smelled.
Being aware or awareness itself never appears in the content of experience, such as a thought, feeling, sensation or perception. It has no objective qualities or features. Yet you cannot say that it is not known. It is in fact the most intimate, obvious, familiar element of your experience. So close, intimate and familiar that you tend to overlook it in favour of the content of experience.
This is why this is sometimes referred to as a recognition, a knowing again of something that you always know but tend to overlook in favour of the more colourful, demanding aspects of your experience – your thoughts, feelings, perceptions and so on.
This recognition that what you are at the deepest level is not the body, but the consciousness with which the body is known and in which it appears, not only has enormous consequences for you personally, in terms of the peace and happiness for which you long, but it also has enormous implications for the world, for our society. The conflict that is so prevalent in our society is a direct and inevitable consequence of the assumption of separation on which our world culture is founded, and the assumption of separation in turn can be directly traced back to the belief that the body is our primary experience.
So this recognition that what you are at the deepest level is not a body, but the fact of being aware, or awareness itself, is not only the recognition that leads to fulfilment and peace for the individual; it is also the recognition on which the possibility of world peace must depend.
Sorrow in the individual and conflict in the world are the inevitable consequence of the assumption of separation on which our world culture is founded. Peace in the individual and harmony in the world are the inevitable consequence of the recognition of your true nature.
In other words, this recognition that what you essentially are at the deepest level is awareness itself is not only the ultimate fulfilment for us as individuals, it is also the greatest service we could render humanity.
Most people believe and feel that the body is the most solid, substantial and enduring element of experience, and that consciousness is the most fleeting, insubstantial, temporary element of experience. The opposite is true. The body is experienced as a flow of sensations and perceptions. There is nothing solid, substantial or enduring about a flow of sensations and perceptions. They are continually appearing, existing briefly and vanishing. The body is an intermittent experience, unlike the experience of being aware, which is the only element of experience that is constant, substantial and unchanging.
It’s like the sun, always shining brightly, irrespective of what is taking place on earth. Consciousness is the only element of experience that doesn’t arise, exist briefly and disappear. It is the only stable element of experience.
The fact of being aware, or awareness itself, is like an invisible thread of pure knowing that runs continuously throughout all changing experience. It never wavers, it never changes, it never comes in and out of existence. It is stable, ever-present, unchanging, illuminating all experience equally, but without participating in any particular experience.
Just as the sun illuminates all the activities on the earth, indiscriminately and impartially, so awareness knows or witnesses the entire content of experience without choice, without preference, without judgment, without resistance. It is the knowing element in all experience, intimately one with all experience, pervading all experience, but not conditioned or qualified by any particular experience.
In other words, it is free. That is, you are free. You do not need to earn your freedom through practice, effort or discipline. It is your nature to be free.
Neil Armstrong said, when he first stepped on the moon, ‘That’s one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind’. Unfortunately it didn’t have the consequences that he hoped it would. But this small step back from the content of experience to that which knows it is much closer to home. It is much easier. It is within everybody’s capacity just to take this small step from the known to the knower, and that small step that each individual can easily make has vast, immeasurable consequences for humanity.
