Being Aware of Being Aware

by Rupert Spira

We turn away from this intuition at our peril.

The turning of the mind away from the objective content of experience towards the source or essence from which it has arisen is the essence of meditation or prayer.

We turn away from the objects of experience and investigate the nature of the one who experiences.

In this investigation, as the mind turns the light of its knowing away from the objects of experience towards its own essence, it is gradually, or occasionally suddenly, divested of its limitations and stands revealed as the very peace and happiness which it previously sought in objective experience.

Peace and happiness are not, as such, objective experiences that the mind has from time to time; they are the very nature of the mind itself.

It is for this reason that all the great religious and spiritual traditions indicate, in one way or another, that the ultimate goal of life – lasting peace and happiness – resides within us and is equally available to all people, at all times and in all circumstances.

However, if we make a deep investigation of the nature of the mind,* that is, if the mind investigates its own essential nature, travelling back through layers of thought, feeling, sensation and perception until it reaches its own essential, irreducible reality, it will always find peace and fulfilment there.

As such, happiness is not a temporary experience that alternates with unhappiness. It is not the opposite of unhappiness, any more than the blue sky is the opposite of the clouds. Just as the clouds are the veiling of the blue sky, so unhappiness is the veiling of happiness.

Happiness is our very nature and lies at the source of the mind, or the heart of ourself, in all conditions and under all circumstances. It cannot be acquired; it can only be revealed.

We cannot know happiness as an objective experience; we can only be it. We cannot be unhappy; we can only know unhapp...

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

However, it is important to recognise that the inward-facing path explored in this book is only half the journey. Once the essential, irreducible nature of the mind has been recognised, and its inherent peace and unconditional joy accessed, it is necessary to face ‘outwards’ again towards objective experience, realigning the way we think and feel, and subsequently act, perceive and relate, with our new understanding.

If we do not reintegrate this understanding with our objective experience, then a fragile alliance will persist between our essential, irreducible nature of pure awareness and all objects and others. This often manifests as a denial or rejection of embodied life in the world and may readily become a refuge for any lingering sense of a separate self.

The process by which this reintegration or establishment takes place, although implicit in the inward-facing or Vedantic tradition, is, in my opinion, best elaborated in the Tantric tradition, and is an exploration that lies beyond the scope of this book.*

Future volumes in The Essence of Meditation Series will explore the collapse of the apparent distinction between awareness and objective experience, but this volume concentrates on discovering the presence, the primacy and the nature of awareness itself, revealing its inherent qualities of imperturbable peace and unconditional joy.

Thus, knowing or being aware is the continuous element in all changing knowledge and experience. It remains consistently present throughout the three states of waking, dreaming and sleeping. No other element of experience is continuous.

The known always changes; knowing never changes.

However, just as the screen tends to be overlooked during a movie due to our fascination with the drama, so knowing, being aware or awareness itself usually remains unnoticed due to the exclusive focus of our attention on the objects of experience.

Knowing or being aware is never modified by experience. It never moves or fluctuates. It is the only stable element in experience.

Knowing or being aware is the primary ingredient in all knowledge and experience. It is the background on which all knowledge and experience take place.

Knowing or being aware is not itself an objective experience, but without it there could be no experience. It is that which makes experience possible and yet is not itself an experience.

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 th...

Thus it is referred to in the Kashmir Shaivite tradition as ‘the greatest secret, more hidden than the most concealed and yet more evi...

It is not necessary to control our thoughts, sit in a particular posture or practise something called meditation in order to be aware of the experience of being aware. The non-objective experience of being aware is the simplest and most intimate, obvious, self-evident fact of experience.

It is not necessary to change or manipulate experience in any way in order to notice the background of simply being aware. We may be afraid, bored, agitated, depressed, in love or at peace; the experience of being aware remains the same in all cases.

Allow the experience of being aware to come into the foreground of experience, and let thoughts, images, feelings, sensations and perceptions recede into the background. Simply notice the experience of being aware. The peace and happiness for which all people long reside there.

Be aware of being aware.

Such a search is simply a refinement of the conventional search for happiness in the realm of objects and ultimately leads to the same frustration.

Enlightenment or awakening is not a particular experience or state of mind that may be achieved by practising hard enough or meditating long enough. It is the recognition of the very nature of the mind.

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.

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.

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.

Deep sleep is not the absence of awareness; it is the awareness of absence.

Thus, in its own experience of itself – and awareness is the only one that knows anything about itself – awareness is birthless and deathless. In other words, awareness is eternal.

Just as nothing happens to the screen when a character in a movie becomes sick, so nothing happens to awareness when the body falls ill. It is for this reason that to know one’s true nature of pure awareness is the ultimate healing. If one knows oneself as pure awareness, ...

Nothing ever happens to ...

Cease being exclusively fascinated by whatever you are aware of and be interested instead in the experience of being aware itself.

Be aware of being aware.

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.

In other words, we have forgotten who or what we essentially are and have mistaken ourself instead for a collection of thoughts, images, memories, feelings, sensations and perceptions.

Due to this ignoring, overlooking or forgetting of our essential nature – the experience of being aware or awareness itself – we have allowed our essential, self-aware being to become mixed with the qualities and, therefore, the limitations of objective experience.

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.

In spite of this, our true nature of eternal, infinite awareness is never completely forgotten or eclipsed by objective experience. However agitated or numbed objective experience may have rendered our mind, the memory of our eternity shines within it as the desire for happiness, or, in religious language, the longing for God.

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 ...