Being Aware of Being Aware

by Rupert Spira

My first teacher, Dr. Francis Roles, once said to me, ‘The truth needs to be reformulated by every generation’.

Knowledge and experience are always changing; knowing or being aware never changes. The known always changes; knowing never changes.

Knowing or being aware is non-objective, transparent or colourless. It is empty of all apparent objects but full of itself alone. It is, as such, an utterly unique experience. It cannot be known as an object and yet it is not unknown. It is the most obvious element of experience and yet the most overlooked. Thus it is referred to in the Kashmir Shaivite tradition as ‘the greatest secret, more hidden than the most concealed and yet more evident than the most evident of things’.

If someone were to ask us the question, ‘Are you aware?’ we would all answer with absolute certainty, ‘Yes’, and our answer would come from direct experience. It would come from our obvious and intimate experience of simply being aware. On the other hand, if someone were to ask us, ‘Is consciousness present?’ or ‘What is awareness?’ we might pause and hesitate as to what exactly is being referred to by these words. So please understand that whenever the words ‘consciousness’ and ‘awareness’ are used in this book in place of ‘knowing’ or ‘being aware’, they are used only as language dictates.

Before awareness knows anything other than itself, such as a thought, feeling, sensation or perception, awareness is aware of itself. Awareness’s nature is to be aware of itself, and thus its primary experience is to be aware of itself.

Just as the sun does not need to direct its light in any particular direction in order to illuminate itself, so awareness does not need to direct its attention, the light of its knowing, in any particular direction in order to know itself.

Thus, to know itself awareness does not have to undertake any special activity or direct the light of its knowing in any particular direction. No effort is required for awareness to know itself. In fact, any effort would take it away from itself. Awareness knows itself simply by being itself.

Thoughts may be agitated, feelings distressed, the body in pain and the world troubled, but pure knowing, being aware or awareness itself is never perturbed by anything that occurs in experience. Thus, its nature is peace itself. This is not a fragile peace that depends on the relative calm of the mind, body or world, but an inherent peace that is always available in the background of experience, prior to and independent of the mind’s activity or inactivity. It is, as such, the peace that ‘passeth understanding’.

Awareness is inherently whole, complete and fulfilled in itself. Thus, its nature is happiness itself – not a happiness that depends upon the condition of the mind, body or world, but a causeless joy that is prior to and independent of all states, circumstances and conditions.

Knowing, being aware or awareness itself is the essential, irreducible essence of the mind prior to its conditioning in the form of objective experience. It is, as such, unconditioned.

Looking more closely we see that the screen is not just in the background of the image but entirely pervades it. Likewise, all experience is permeated with the knowing with which it is known. It is saturated with the experience of being aware or awareness itself. There is no part of a thought, feeling, sensation or perception that is not infused with the knowing of it. This second realisation collapses, at least to a degree, the distinction between awareness and its objects.

Thus, love and beauty are the nature of awareness. In the familiar experience of love or beauty, awareness is tasting its own eternal, infinite reality. It is in this context that the painter Paul Cézanne said that art gives us the ‘taste of nature’s eternity’.

Just as the screen is utterly defenceless against anything that happens in a movie and yet is never destroyed by the activity that takes place upon it, so awareness is completely open or vulnerable to all experience and yet, at the same time, unharmable and indestructible.

Likewise, the awareness with which our most intelligent thoughts are known is the same as the awareness with which our most unintelligent thoughts are known. The awareness with which the sensation of pain, tension or agitation is known is the same awareness with which the sensation of pleasure, relaxation or warmth is known. The awareness with which the experience of anger, sorrow or grief is known is the same as the awareness with which the experience of gratitude, kindness or enjoyment is known.

Awareness never experiences its own appearance or disappearance, its own beginning or ending, its own birth or death. In order to claim such an experience, awareness would have to be present prior to its own appearance, beginning or birth and after its own disappearance, ending or death.

Nothing ever happens to awareness.

Although the experience of being aware is not something that we can be aware of objectively, the non-objective experience of being aware is undoubtedly known or experienced.

Most of us are so fascinated by the content of experience – thoughts, images, feelings, sensations and perceptions – that we overlook the knowing with which all knowledge and experience are known.

As such, the separate self or ego is an inevitable corollary to the forgetting, overlooking or ignoring of the true and only self* of eternal, infinite awareness, or, in religious language, the forgetting of God’s infinite being.

The ‘I’ that is known is the ‘I’ that knows. The sun that illuminates is the sun that is illuminated. Only awareness is aware of awareness. Only being aware is being aware of being aware.

Whether we see a landscape or a screen depends on the way we see, not what we see. First we see a landscape; then we recognise the screen; then we see the screen as a landscape. First we see only a multiplicity and diversity of objects; then we recognise the presence of awareness; then we see awareness as the totality of objective experience. This is what the Sufis mean when they say, ‘There is only God’s face.’ And this is what Ramana Maharshi referred to when he said, ‘The world is unreal; only Brahman is real; Brahman is the world.’ From this perspective, experience no longer veils awareness but shines with it. The known shines with knowing.

we could say that awareness loses itself in objective experience and, as such, veils itself with its own activity, just as a screen could be said to be obscured by the drama in a movie. It is for this reason that the Sufi mystic Balyani said, ‘He veils Himself with Himself.’

This veiling, inadvertence or turning away from awareness is known as ‘original sin’ in the Christian tradition and as ‘ignorance’ in Vedanta. The Hebrew word most often translated in the Bible as ‘sin’ is chata’ah, meaning literally ‘to miss the mark’.

That is, awareness must see itself clearly, and to see itself clearly it must ‘look at’ itself. However, just as the beam of light from a flashlight can be directed towards an object but cannot be directed towards the bulb from which it emanates, so awareness, in the form of attention or mind, can direct the light of its knowing towards objective experience but cannot direct itself towards itself.

We cannot direct our mind towards the experience of being aware; we can only direct our mind away from it. Therefore, it would be more accurate to say that awareness must relax the focus of its attention, or disentangle itself from the objects of experience, thereby allowing its attention to return to or come to rest in itself. Thus, the highest form of meditation is not an activity that is undertaken by the mind. It is a relaxing, falling back or sinking of the mind into its source or essence of pure awareness, from which it has arisen. This returning of awareness to itself, its remembrance of itself – being aware of being aware – is the essence of meditation and prayer, and the direct path to lasting peace and happiness.

The apparently separate self or ego is like a rubber ball that is being squeezed. All there is to the squeezed ball is the original ball. However, squeezing the ball shrinks it and sets up a tension that is always seeking to expand it to its original, relaxed condition. The squeezed ball does nothing; it is the naturally relaxed state of the fully expanded ball that draws the contracted ball back to its original condition.

The movement of the separate self towards its essence of pure awareness is, from the perspective of the separate self, felt as desire or longing; the pull of inherently relaxed, peaceful awareness on the contraction of the separate self is the attraction of grace. Our love for God is God’s love for us.

Awareness becomes mixed with and, therefore, apparently limited by the qualities of thinking, feeling, sensing and perceiving, and thus seems to become a temporary, finite self or mind. Awareness of objects eclipses awareness of awareness.

Just as a movie could be said to be the activity of the screen, or a current the activity of the ocean, so mind is the activity of awareness. As such, mind is awareness in motion; awareness is mind at rest.

The mind that seeks awareness is like a current in the ocean in search of water. Such a mind is destined for endless dissatisfaction.

Awareness seems to lose itself in its own creativity; it veils itself with its own activity. Meditation is the disentangling of awareness from its own activity.

When we come out of bright sunlight into a dark room, we cannot do anything with the mind to make the objects appear in the darkness. We just stay there and relax, and slowly the objects emerge.

Meditation is similar. There is nothing the mind can do to find or know awareness, for the mind is a limitation of the very awareness for which it is in search. Anything the mind does is simply more of its own veiling activity. Meditation is the subsidence of the activity of mind and the subsequent revelation of the very essence of the mind – pure knowing or awareness – to itself.

The answer to the question ‘Am I aware?’ is obviously, ‘Yes’. The question ‘Am I aware?’ is a thought, in which we are not yet certain of the answer. The answer ‘Yes’ is a second thought, in which we are absolutely certain of the answer. Something takes place between these two thoughts which converts the uncertainty expressed in the question to the certainty expressed in the answer.

Whatever occurs between these two thoughts is not itself an appearance or activity of the mind; it occurs between two such appearances or activities. And yet whatever happens in that placeless place – placeless because in the absence of the activity of mind no time or space is experienced – gives us the conviction from which we are able to answer ‘Yes’ to the question ‘Am I aware?’ with absolute certainty. In order to answer the question ‘Am I aware?’ we must ‘go to’ the experience of being aware. In other words, we must know the experience of being aware. We must be aware of being aware.

awareness doesn’t become aware of itself. Awareness is always aware of itself, just as the sun is always illuminating itself.

The mind can only stand as such by attending to an object, so when the mind asks itself the question ‘Am I aware?’ it embarks on a journey in an objectless direction – a pathless path – away from thoughts, images, feelings, sensations and perceptions and towards its essential, irreducible essence of pure awareness. Ramana Maharshi referred to this non-process as ‘sinking the mind into the heart’.

In fact, to suggest that the mind embarks on a journey to rediscover its essence or reality may be misleading. How much distance is there between an image and the screen?

The path of the finite mind to its fundamental, irreducible essence is not a journey from one place or entity to another, although, as a concession to the mind’s belief in itself as a separate, independently existing entity, this discovery is often depicted as a journey, path or pilgrimage. It is more like the fading of an image on a screen. Mind is the self-colouring activity of awareness. Meditation is the fading or dissolving of this self-colouring activity and the subsequent revelation of the colourless essence of the mind, pure awareness itself.

However, a mind that is accustomed to repeatedly dissolving in its source or essence becomes progressively saturated with its inherent peace. When such a mind rises again from the ocean of awareness, its activity makes that peace available to humanity.

Such a mind may also be inspired by knowledge that is not simply a continuation of the past but comes directly from its unconditioned essence. This inspiration brings creativity and new possibilities into whatever sphere of knowledge or activity in which that mind operates.

However, just as the sun cannot shine its own light on itself because it is already standing at itself, so awareness cannot direct the light of its knowing towards itself because there is no distance from itself to itself. It is not because awareness is so far that it seems to be unknown or missing; it is because it is so close. It is closer than close.

If someone were to ask us, relatively speaking, to stand up and take a step towards ourself, in which direction would we turn? We cannot take a step towards ourself, because we are already standing at ourself. Nor indeed can we take a step away from ourself, because we take ourself with us wherever we go.

In fact, all relative knowledge and experience are derived from and are a refraction of this single, non-dual, absolute knowledge, just as the apparent multiplicity and diversity of the objects and people in a night dream are refractions of a single, indivisible mind.

In order to know something seemingly other than itself, such as a thought, feeling, sensation or perception, awareness must shine its attention, the light of its knowing, away from itself, towards that object, but in order to know itself it does not need to direct the light of its knowing away from itself.

Awareness is so close to itself that there is no distance between itself and itself and, therefore, no room for a path. Any path would be a path from awareness towards an object. From awareness to awareness there is no space, no distance, no time and, therefore, no possibility of a path or practice. Thus, being aware of being aware is a non-practice. This is why the Direct Path is referred to as a pathless path.

Just as the stretching of a rubber band sets up a state of tension that is always tending to revert to its original, relaxed condition, so attention, or the directing of awareness towards an object, establishes a subtle tension that is always tending to revert to its natural state of equilibrium.

Thinking, feeling, acting and perceiving are all activities of mind, although in almost all cases we have become so accustomed to this activity that it is no longer registered as such. However, being aware of being aware – awareness’s awareness of itself – is the only truly effortless experience there is. Everything else, even breathing or thinking, requires energy. This is what Ashtavakra meant when he said, ‘For the sage, even blinking is too much trouble.’

The sun that illuminates is the sun that is illuminated. The awareness that knows is the awareness that is known. Meditation is between awareness and itself. It is simply awareness being itself, resting in itself, knowing itself alone: being aware of being aware.

We cannot become what we essentially are through any kind of practice. Through practice we can only become something that is not essential to us. We can become fifty years old. We can become tired. We can become married. We can become lonely. But our essential, self-aware being is prior to all becoming, and indeed remains present, albeit usually unnoticed, throughout all becoming.