Glimpses Behind the Mask of Selfhood: Mauro Bergonzi

[Music] once a woman had a dream she was in the presence of God and a great voice asked who are you after a moment's hesitation the woman showed the her passport and said this is me here is my picture here is my signature it's the signature the voice said I didn't ask for an image of yours I asked who are you she was a little disoriented at the beginning but then she said oh yes I am Mary the voice said I didn't ask you what's your name I asked who are you I am a hairdresser I didn't ask you what is your job I asked you who are you the woman remained speechless for a while and then what she believed me the right answer popped up in a in a mind and she said I am a Christian and the voice became more severe still I didn't ask you your religion I asked you who are you at that point that she was really puzzled at and perplexity and so she played our last card and said I always helping poor people and done charity work and at that point the Lord looked down we in compassion upon her and for the last time I said I didn't ask what you have done I asked who are you the poor woman woke up all in a sweetie sweetie and realized that she would have to inquire more deeply into the question Who am I before meeting God again so this story tells says that is not so easy to inquire into Who I am and the problem is not only that she didn't know who she was but also that she believed to be something that was not true once Mark Twain said the most danger doesn't the biggest ledger doesn't come from what we don't know but rather from what we believe it is true while it isn't so in in exploring together the question Who am I is important to recognize the many like in the many layers of an onion you know and to put aside the step by step the masks that cover our true face in order to recognize what is the core essence of our identity and in if you like to explore with me this question together we I think that it's very important that we use our immediate and experienced our our direct and immediate experience because in our direct and immediate experience many things arise physical physical sensations perceptions and thoughts but the thoughts have a strange power that they arise in our experience but they come very near to our eyes like like spectacles you know and we easily begin to see what what is through our thoughts when we see things through Spectrals we can see the spectacles we see through the spectacles and so we forget that all all that we are seeing is it has the conditioning of those spectacles so it's very important to put them out and to see that they are just one among the many things that appear in our awareness oh my what I what I invite you to do through many questions that we will ask during this meeting is to to look directly directly at your experience before that your thought begins to describe it you can do it can do it later on but in in the immediate exploration it's important to see what is evident in our experience so when one asks the question Who am I very often the first answer that comes up for most people is I am this body and this mind and body and mind are named names concepts so first of all if we explore in our immediate experience what is it that we mean when we say body what happens if you just explore body then put aside the name and see what is it here in the experience that we call body and I think that you can discover what we usually call physical sensations pulses nuances of or temperature vibrations possessions that just appear and disappear from moment to moment that is let's call them physical sensations that is all what our experience direct experience shows when we say body and of course when we say mind we just see thoughts memories images that arise and pass away so if we say that we are this body and this mind we discover that we are something much more alive and much more changing than the two wars if you like now let's do a very simple experiment if you just for a moment close your eyes and go to the mind and visualize a flower no matter which one the the easiest that comes up in your in your mind a flower you can see it it is a a mental image now put it aside and visualize an umbrella it doesn't matter if it is closed or opened an umbrella okay now there were two very different images that we call mind but very different one from the another one is passing by the other came and now has disappeared now the you that was observing the first image the flower was the same that was observing the umbrella or they were two totally different you is there any difference that you can see between the two observers no so we can say that there were two different images but just one observer you that doesn't change the same we can do for example with a body we can feel for just a moment what are the physical sensation on your left hand and you can feel these this energy that flows and moves their vibrations possessions and if you just put it aside and and explore the physical sensations of your tongue you can see that there are many differences in those sessions in comparison with the ones of the of your hand and again they change they are different but the observer is just the same so we provisionally we could say that we are both something that change is changing the images that we call mind the same physical sensation that we call the body and something that doesn't change the observer of them we are both both partake to our identity somehow but which is closer to the inner core of our identity what is changing or what is the opposite for example we also addresses somehow define our identity according to our dressing our clothing we can be an L an elegant person or whatever so our dressing is part that define ours our identity and of course our physical aspect our bodies also define our identity which is closer to our inner identity our dresses our or our body I think that most of you would say our body and if I asked why you would answer because I can change my dress and when I put it off I remain myself while I cannot change my body actually also the body changes it's enough to see one picture of hours of 10 years ago to see that also the body changes but in this answer if you answered as I guess you establish a rule for this inquiry into the inner core of our identity and the rule is that what changes is less relevant than what changes less or doesn't change and so if we follow this this rule in our inquiry we can say that our body is changing through time and the from moment to moment if we look at our body in our immediate experience with the physical sensation flowing very quickly our thoughts our mind is even faster in changing from moment to moment and so if we put aside everything that changes what remains I remind you that you up now are enquiring into your identity and that you are present so you are here so no need to look for something in the future the future that is not now so if you are present there must be he what doesn't change and what doesn't change of course is a very simple thing the very fact that you are that you exist and that you are aware in this moment this doesn't change because is always here we can call it in one term being awareness and this a web presence is what the mind the translates into the sentence I am they let's call it I am consciousness our we're presence is prior to everything that appears as experience because if first of all you are not here present and aware nothing appears to you so every sensation every perception every thought can appear only if prior to it you are exist in a pretender where you have the you are this aware presence in our life so we can say that what happens can be translated in the in this simple sentence I am this this is what happens usually I am being they may aware presence and did this the changing experience that is happening for example we say I am happy I am said I am hungry I am said I am old I am young and so on the the old young happy said that is the beasts of I am this the this part of the experience the I am is always the same is it is the observer of what happens and now what happens is very interesting because when this appears all our attention gets focused only on the disk and we forget or overlook they I am this happens because for us is very important to be happy and not said to be healthy and not seek to be rich and not war and so on and so the this is very important for for our mind and the old attention goes there and overlooks and forgets they I am that is what opens up the entire horizon of any this that can appear we forget they am that is the unchanging part of experience and we are hypnotized by the changing part of the experience and we it's very similar read the words that are written on a page we see the words and we forget the page but if I ask you when you read the words do you see the page or you don't or don't you it's difficult to answer because you see the page if you didn't see the page you couldn't see the words because the words are not on the page they are the page so if you if your attention is only on the words nevertheless you are seeing the page but you don't notice it you forget it if we forget the very I am that is prior at the precondition for any experience at all to occur and this is something that makes that promotes the arising of the illusion of a separate eye of a separate ego there are many things that create this marriage the first is that we use for example the word eye in different ways in different ways for example we sometimes say I am sick I am healthy I am tall I am short and the eye is referring to the body when we say I am said I'm happy I'm intelligent I'm stupid the eye refers to the mind and the eye always refers to our aware presence when we say I we always mean also our aware presence and so these are three very different ways of using the world I and when the mind that tries to organize a description of Oh Who am I it makes just one package of the three as if they were the same but you can see that there is a strong difference because the body and the mind are the dis our aware present is the I am that is the precondition that is the a where space where any DS can appear so you can't put them in one package not when we have this use do this package we begin to think that I am this that is I am I as anywhere presence M the body and the mind but what about perceptions what about sounds colors smells are know that I am NOT that is the outer world world and so we say I am this my web presence is body mind but I am not that the X external world what has to say our experience about this if you you are here you are now are hearing my voice you can describe it in the mind that can describe this in two ways you can call this a sound meaning something coming to you from outside an object of the external world or you can call it hearing meaning something in you that receives the sound and since our mind our language our thought is using two opposite terms 1 X 2 sound the other internal hearing realities cut in two sides into hulls helps the external sound and my hearing but if you check your immediate experience while you are hearing my voice could you see the exact edge the exit borderline where the sounds out there finish and the hearing in here is beginning and this is impossible because that line is only in our mind in the description in the maps that the mind builds up in order to describe reality the experience is this of a sound after this the mind say I heard a sound and this is hi the subject and the sound the object but this is a rule of grammar is not a rule of the nature in nature things happen when we say I eat I decide I think I do we easily think that there is a separate entity an entity a part called I that performs the action of eating speaking doing this is because our language needs a subject meaning something that does performs an action that is the world and so the the verbal cannot be the subject of two words but is are they really two entities when we say the wind blows is there really an entity a particle the with the wind that performs the action or blowing or when it doesn't blow where is the wind when we say it rains we know that there is no eat that performance of action of raining is just a construction of grammar there is no need to imagine ni apart from what's happening now as speaking doing deciding for choosing they are only experience appearing in the worst space that I am all this appears in this space of awareness but so in in our a we're presence every experience appear the experience of sensory senses and sensations physical sensation that we call body the experiences of the thoughts that we call mind and the spirits of hearing the seeing that we call the world all these appears only in our aware presence otherwise it wouldn't appear as an experience this is why these were these I am consciousness this feeling of being aware is prior to any experience is prior to the body's prior to the mind is prior to the world when we begin to to say that I am this I am the physical sensations that I call the body and I am the thoughts that I call the mind while I am NOT the perceptions that I call the word the illusion of a separate ego is born and we begin to think that the mind is in the body and my aware presence that is the space of awareness where everything is appearing at the mind the body in the world is in the body in the mind inside there usually in our head behind the eyes there is a homunculus that is me that isn't a body has a body and controls everything but if my presence were where presence of food where only in the mind in the in the body nothing could appear of what is beyond not even the body yesterday I was saying if you look at your hand is my awareness inside the hand or rather is it the end that is fully merchant in awareness so by identifying our aware presence with the body-mind only with a body mind we believed to be a limited and the separate consciousness that we call a ego I located in and identified with a single body mind while actually that aware presence that we call am includes the illusory separate ego and the world includes the apparent reality between subject and object now if you have followed me we can explore a little bit closer into our experience of this strange thing that is the I am consciousness or the being awareness first of all if I ask you just now are you really sure that you exist that you are I suppose that after short polls your answer will be yes beyond any doubt now of course my question and your answer where was made of thoughts but what happened in the gap between the question and the answer when you verified whether you are there or not are here or not what happened we during that pause after the question did you need to ponder on it did you need to reason to use the thought in order to verify if you are or rather your presence your being was there that before any thought could arise and in that poses something very interesting happens that your being becomes self-evident by itself it doesn't as light light it doesn't need to be enlightened from outside it shines by itself so there was not a subject object relationship you that we are looking at your being but your being that was becoming a self-evident in just a timeless moment that is very important because if your being is not an inert thing a dead thing but is evident shining it means not only that it is being but it is also awareness you not only exist but you are aware not aware of awareness itself being itself and in fact if I ask you just now are you sure that you are aware the same thing in the polls before you say even before you think about it your awareness is evident as a light now do you have this being awareness or rather are you being awareness can can the can there be a you that doesn't exist of course you are being awareness you don't have in order to have something you must be and also be aware so you and awareness are the same thing the same it identity now have you ever experienced two means at the same time two eyes together at the same time two different eyes not even who has suffers multiple personalities as two personalities together once one at a time so there is always only one eye now if there is only one eye that is always the same and if it is it is not it has it is being and awareness that means that me being awareness cannot be two separate things but they are just two aspects of the same reality like the two sides of a coin like the head and the tail of a ket they are not two separate things they are the gate this implies a subtle point I am sorry to to be sometimes so but it is important to to explore this if being and awareness are two aspects of the same reality this means that actually you can't be aware of your being as an object I imagine that I guess that some of you could say that I am aware of my being of my existence is not really so you can be aware of the thought I exist you can be aware of the thought I exist because thoughts are objects that appear as experiences to me aware and present my aware presence observes thoughts and among those thoughts there is the thought the thought I exist I am but we know that the thoughts like wars are never what they mean otherwise we could drink the world that water and we could solve many problems in the world so I cannot be aware of my being as an object because this would imply that there is on one side the awareness as a subject that is observing being as an object but they are the two kinds of the same this oh sorry the two faces of the same coin so they cannot be and they don't need actually because as we have seen awareness is being are such I mean are self-evident you don't need to be seen from outside now let us ask our aware presence our I am consciousness that is this being at this awareness as I am consciousness as the consciousness that I exist as my feeling of being has it any borderline where it ends in your direct experience can't you see any edge that marks its boundaries of your being of your being aware can you see any edge is impossible of course it's impossible because any borderline in order to be perceived must always appear already in awareness and so it cannot be of awareness can you succeed in stopping being for just one second it is impossible I think if you are being an awareness do you need any effort in order to be and be aware or it happens by itself spontaneously without any effort if you cannot even stop it is it a goal that we have to reach now and so all the spiritual traditions that say that you have to walk along a path in order to reach what you are being awareness as I told yesterday are similar to a wave that tries to reach the water it is made of good learning experience appear apart from our being awareness we have already seen that it is impossible being awareness opens up the horizon of every experience if an experience is outside being awareness is not it is not an experience we can can't perceive it at all could an experience anyhow affect the purest simple fact that we exist and are aware I mean whether we feel for example pain or we feel play does it in any way alters the simple fact that we are exist and we are aware is the function of being aware and of existing altered affected the somehow from by the current experience when you feel pleasure do you exist are you aware when you feel pain do you exist are you aware so this is a very interesting because being awareness is free from any experience and this being an awareness has any distinctive form or quality of its own apart the fact of being and being aware do they have do I has being awareness some feature distinctive features or form precise form apart the fact that one is and is aware no and so we arrive at a interesting question this being awareness is is being awareness personal or impersonal it's personal or impersonal what makes a person different from another one of course the mind and the body your thoughts your recurring patterns that we call personality your physical aspect all these things makes this body different from yours so we are speaking of the changing this of the IMD's but in how the pure simple fact of being and being aware mind could can be different from yours if they don't have any distinctive forms or features only being a being aware my only being and being aware in how could it be different from yours so we have seen that the simple fact of being and being aware what we call our aware presence over our I am consciousness is exactly the same in every one if it is in every one but we have seen also that it has no specific features that it is boundless because it has no edges or border lines that we can perceive in our experience and so if there is no difference and if there are no border line border it is boundless the result is that as far as our experiences shows us the am is only one is the same there is no border line there is no specific form that can distinguish my aware presence from the one of the others especially because it is not they I am to be inside the body but it is the body to be are all bodies that appear in that presence like this I am consciousness is a similar to the moon that reflects in thousands of pools of water in every pool there is the image of the moon the light of the moon but the moon is only one so we have seen that this being awareness in the form of I am consciousness is one is boundless is impersonal is changeless and prior to any experience you cannot deepen it because it is bottomless you cannot expand it because it is boundless you cannot practice it because you are already doing it you cannot reach it Wiki because it is already here so it seems that we find some something of the inner core of our identity identity means what is always identical so what doesn't change but now comes another question my feeling of being my am my I am consciousness not does it change or it is constant in relationship with experiences it is unchanging we have seen it but is it always present what happens for example in a faint or every night in a deep sleep without dreams do we still know that we are know in deep sleep we don't know that we are in terms of a mental thought of the object so our I am consciousness is present in the waking state of consciousness is present in the Dreaming state of consciousness but when there is the deep sleep our we will no more know that we exist the I am consciousness disappears and we choose to know our existence as an object of mind however we still are of course something remains and so the question is if we notice that the I am consciousness comes and goes even that who or what notices death the coming and going of the our aware presence what is that registers its presence and it's an absence in such a way that we know that it comes and goes that is there are knowable source of aware of presence of our aware presence of the am it that is there knowable source of being awareness that source cannot be known because is the knowing itself it's the ultimate awareness non-dual awareness that registers even when our I am consciousness is not present [Applause] so something remains in deep sleep because you know some usually people think that in deep asleep we are not aware that is not so we of course what is sure that is that in deep sleep there is no experience nothing to be aware of that is true and this explains why we cannot have any memory of it if there is nothing to remember of course we have no memory but awareness was completely of or or there is some awareness if you listen to my voice you're hearing is working you can hear ok if you are closed in a room completely silent you cannot hear any sound but that means that your hearing is not there does it mean that you become deaf no of course how how how can you check it how can you sure that you take that your hearing is there because as soon as a new sound arises you can hear it and when we wake up all tears again if awareness were completely disappeared in deep sleep how can it came back when we wake up but that awareness is not awareness of something is easy the light of awareness you know the light when when the light travels through space it is in vital otherwise in night night the sky would be all white the light when he travels is in vital it becomes visible only with it when it meets a reflecting surface and when it becomes visible it assumes the size the dimension and the color of that specific surface otherwise by itself and life is advisable so awareness becomes what is appearing as as as its vibration and so we see things but when there is no activity at all awareness is there as pure being awareness unknowable ready to know what when some other vibration go comes and so we arrive to see these three layer three things that we have met in our in our inquiry at the level of our ordinary experience we perceive our identity as a separate eye as a subject that is opposed to the world outside that is the object this is the the first idea that we have when we inquire into who am i is that I am a separate I even exclusively identified with what only one body and one mind localized in a special point of space and time but bringing deeper our our investigation our inquiry we begin to understand that what we believed to be a small aware presence inside the body mind it is really a in a where space where everything appears in our direct experience you see all this space where everything appears it is space or awareness otherwise nothing could appear and in this space appear not on not only appear not only the body and the mind appear but also what we call the world and so this I am consciousness this feeling of being that we feel as the core of our identity actually is not limited in the body because the body the mind and the entire world appear in it so it becomes one I am consciousness where all the world appear is what mr. Gaddafi say calls the totality of the known all what it can be known is in it with further inspection we have seen that even this universal I am consciousness is not constant but comes and goes and what registers is presence or absence is the unknowable source of being awareness that these are galata calls the immensity of their known he says I see the world appearing in consciousness I am that is the totality of the known in the immensity of the known we are that immensity but so let us see this the the separate ego the I am consciousness that were the totality of the known appears and the immensity of their known these are not three levels of reality these are not three dimensions this this distinction that I made is only because our pure mind must use very very narrow instrument that is the thought and the thought must divide to differentiate so what is important to understand is that there are only as a concession to our thought we can speak of these three things in reality there is only one mysterious unbelievable unknowable reality where all these things contemporary unfold maybe we can be helped by the metaphor of the sea imagine that the waves of the sea are our experiences and our small separate egos one wave is different from the other each wave is born and then dies and it moves through space and time the sea is the I am consciousness what we all of us having kong in common that feeling of being and they awareness where everything appears and the sea doesn't go anywhere and is not separate from the waves the waves cannot have an existence apart from the sea they are not even things they are just an activity of the sea a moving of the sea so you can see that there is no separation between the waves and the sea there is no separation between the waves of our experiences of our apparent individual egos and the am consciousness at the core of our identity and then beyond the sea beyond the waves there is water water is both the sea and the waves and the water is what remains when all the concepts of sea and waves collapses into the norm and so you can see that at this point the idea of awakening becomes obsolete because it is only another concept that vanishes when one realizes that this unknown source of being awareness of our aware presence is always awake it has no need of an awakening it is always awake because it is awakeness itself and that is our what we really are this awareness is not a far away transcendent state that we have to reach it is the very essence of our ordinary lives of this moment this is why it is important not to lose our intimacy with the life in in spiritual in the spiritual world people very often look for a safe place from the touch of life because the touch of life can be also very painful and so people look for the witness stands for some meditative peace that can keep us apart from life as simply observers we say I am NOT the body I am NOT the mind I am NOT the world I just am the observer the detached of server of it from a safe place this is a very precious experience in comparison with before before we were lost in our life as an individual ego that has to go to cross the ups and downs without realizing anything so when we see that something in Aza is not those ups and downs is something more spacious where the ups and downs happen so this is a very precious discovery that can save us a lot of suffering so I'm not speaking against the position of the witness it has been often misunderstood the even in what in the East as liberation that is it radical advanced radical is really see I am NOT the body I am NOT a match I am only the witness but the question is that I am also the body I am also the mind I may also disapperance separate ego but I am NOT only death those I am in this at the same time the witness where all of all those experience appear and I am the unknown source where even the wit with witness appears and dissapears this is what we wear before being born we this is what we will be after dying and this is what we actually are just in this moment [Applause] [Music]

Channel: scienceandnonduality

Views: 10,873

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Keywords: Mauro Bergonzi, Non Duality, Self, The Absolute

Id: bYUcQuCbBgk

Length: 63min 5sec (3785 seconds)

Published: Mon Nov 20 2017