Being Aware of Being Aware

by Rupert Spira

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. It is the ‘inward-facing path’ – sometimes referred to as self-remembering, self-enquiry, self-abidance or the way of surrender – of which the Direct Path that is explored in this book is the culmination.

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.

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.

Knowing or being aware is not inaccessible, unknown or buried within us. It is shining clearly in the background of all experience, just as it could be said that the screen is clearly visible in the background of a movie. 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.

There are no prerequisites for the recognition of knowing or being aware. To recognise the experience of knowing or being aware does not require a particular qualification or level of intelligence. No effort is required to recognise the experience of knowing or being aware, any more than an effort is required to see the screen during a movie. 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. The experience of being aware is independent of whatever we are aware of. No experience affects the non-objective experience of being aware, just as nothing that takes place in a movie affects the screen upon which it plays. 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. Just as no particular event in a movie has the ability to obscure the screen unless we allow it to do so, so no experience has the ability to veil the experience of knowing or being aware unless we permit it to do so, in which case it will seem to do so. As soon as we withdraw that permission, the experience of knowing or being aware becomes self-evident. Allow the experience of being...

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.

Having noticed that the experience of being aware is our most direct and intimate experience, we may wonder who or what it is that knows or has the experience of being aware. What is it that knows the experience of knowing? What is it that is aware of being aware? The common name for the experience of being aware is ‘I’. I am aware of the thought of my friend. I am aware of the memory of childhood. I am aware of the feeling of sorrow, loneliness or shame. I am aware of the image of my home. I am aware of the sensation of pain or hunger. I am aware of the sight of my room or the sound of traffic. In each of these examples, ‘I’ is the name we give to that which knows or is aware of all knowledge and experience. As such, ‘I’ is the knowing or aware element in all knowledge and experience. ‘I’ is awareness itself. So we could rephrase the question ‘What is it that is aware of being aware?’ as, ‘Who or what is it that knows that I am aware?’ Is it I who am aware of being aware, or is the experience of being aware known by someone or something other than myself? It is obviously I who am aware that I am aware. That is, it is ‘I, awareness’ that is aware of being aware. It is awareness that knows or is aware that there is awareness. Thus, being aware or awareness itself is self-aware. Just as the sun illuminates itself, so awareness knows itself. Before awareness knows anything other than itself, such as a thought, feeling, sensation or perception, awareness is aware of itself. Aw...

All there is to a thought is thinking, and all there is to thinking is knowing. All there is to an emotion is feeling, and all there is to feeling is knowing. All there is to a sensation is sensing, and all there is to sensing is knowing. All there is to a perception is perceiving, and all there is to perceiving is knowing. Thus, all there is to experience is knowing, and it is knowing that knows this knowing. Being all alone, with nothing in itself other than itself with which it could be limited or divided, knowing or pure awareness is whole, perfect, complete, indivisible and without limits. This absence of duality, separation or otherness is the experience of love or beauty, in which any distinction between a self and an object, other or world has dissolved. 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’.

Thus, our essential nature of knowing, being aware or awareness itself has no age. It is for this reason that as we get older, we feel that we are not really getting older. The older we get, the more we feel that we have always been the same person. The sameness in ourself is the sameness of awareness. 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.

The mind believes that awareness resides within the body and thus shares its limitations and destiny. Therefore, the mind believes that when the body is born, awareness is born; that when the body grows old and sick, awareness grows old and sick; and that when the body dies and disappears, awareness dies and disappears with it. However, when the character in a movie is born, the screen is not born; when the character in a movie grows old, the screen doesn’t age; and when the character in a movie dies, the screen doesn’t die or disappear. Likewise, when the body appears or is born, awareness is not born; when the body ages, awareness does not age; and when the body disappears or dies, awareness does not die or disappear. It remains in the same ageless condition throughout. 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. The finite mind imagines that awareness disappears in deep sleep, but in awareness’s experience it is the finite mind that disappears in deep sleep, leaving awareness all alone. Deep sleep is not the absence of awareness; it is the awareness of absence.

In other words, the mind believes that awareness shares the limits and, therefore, the destiny of the body. This apparent mixture of awareness with the properties and limitations of the body results in the separate self or ego that most people believe and feel themselves to be.

Once the apparently separate self or ego has exhausted the possibilities for securing peace and happiness in objective experience, it may be open to the possibility of accessing them within itself. This intuition is the beginning of the separate self’s return to its inherently peaceful and unconditionally fulfilled essence of pure awareness, and is thus the resolution of its search.

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.

Meditation is, as such, the remembering of our self: the pristine, luminous, inherently peaceful and unconditionally fulfilled experience of being aware that we always and already are, which runs ever-present throughout all experience, seemingly but never really obscured by thoughts, feelings, sensations and perceptions.

Awareness of objects eclipses awareness of awareness.

As such, mind is awareness in motion; awareness is mind at rest.

Awareness is like the white paper. It is the luminous, self-aware presence upon which or within which all experience appears, the transparent knowing with which all experience is known and, ultimately, the substance or reality out of which all experience is made. The poet Shelley referred to it as ‘the white radiance of eternity’.

As the mind proceeds in this objectless direction it begins to relax, sink or fall back into the source of awareness from which it has arisen. The mind progressively loses its colour or activity until its essence of pure awareness is revealed. Alfred, Lord Tennyson was referring to this sacred investigation when he wrote, ‘Follow knowledge like a sinking star, beyond the utmost bound of human thought’.

That is, seek absolute knowledge of the eternal, infinite, self-aware being that shines in each of our minds as the experience of being aware or the knowledge ‘I am’, at the very source of the mind itself, prior to all objective knowledge and experience. 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.

In the pause between the question ‘Am I aware?’ and the answer ‘Yes’, the mind is relieved of its activity and, as a result, its limitations, and stands revealed as infinite awareness, illuminating or knowing itself alone. Awareness is aware of awareness.

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.

Everything apart from awareness, that is, all objects of thought and perception, is known by something other than itself – a separate subject of experience – but awareness is known by itself alone. Therefore, awareness’s knowledge of itself is a unique kind of knowledge. It is the only form of knowledge that does not require the subject–object relationship. It is absolute knowledge. That is, it is the only knowledge or experience that is not relative to or dependent upon the finite mind, the apparently separate subject of experience.

In order to shine on the moon, the sun’s light must travel a certain distance through space. But in order to illuminate itself, the sun doesn’t need to go anywhere or do anything. The sun’s nature is illumination. Just by being itself the sun illuminates itself. In other words, for the sun, to be itself and to illuminate itself are the same. Illuminating itself is not something that the sun does; it is what it is. It is self-illuminating. Likewise, awareness knows itself simply by being itself, without the need for any other agency. That is, awareness knows itself by itself, in itself, through itself, as itself alone, without the need to rise in the form of mind or attention.

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’s nature is pure knowing. It is self-illuminating, self-knowing, self-aware. There is no difference between our own being and the knowing of our own being, just as there is no difference between the sun and its shining.

This is why the Direct Path is referred to as a pathless path. In the Direct Path we start with the goal and we stay there. That is, awareness starts with itself and stays with itself. Thus, the highest meditation is simply to be. For this reason, there can be no effort in this non-practice. Any effort would involve directing the mind towards an object or trying to control the focus of attention.

Meditation is not something we do; it is something we cease to do. Thus, it could be called self-returning or self-resting. Everything apart from the knowing of our own being requires some kind of activity. 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.

In the Direct Path, awareness is simultaneously the origin, the path and the goal. Being aware is simultaneously the subject that knows, the process of knowing and the object that is known. Being aware is being aware of being aware. Awareness is aware of awareness. Knowing is knowing only knowing. Being aware of being aware is the essence of meditation. It is the only form of meditation that does not require the directing, focusing or controlling of the mind. 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.

If we are suffering it would be better to be honest with ourself and investigate the one who suffers. After all, if we are suffering we are, by definition, seeking. Doing nothing is not an option for one who considers himself to be a separate self. For such a one there are only two possibilities: to seek temporary relief in objects, substances, activities, states of mind and relationships, or to seek the source of suffering within himself through self-enquiry or self-investigation, which naturally leads to self-abidance or self-surrender.

The knowledge ‘I am’ shines briefly in our experience at the end of every thought, feeling, sensation or perception, although it usually remains unnoticed due to its brevity, as when the screen is revealed between two frames of a movie.

The knowledge ‘I am’ is like a small image of a screen appearing on that screen. From the standpoint of the image, the image of the screen is part of the image; from the standpoint of the screen it is the screen. From the point of view of the mind, the knowledge ‘I am’ is an experience within the mind; from the point of view of awareness, it is awareness itself. It is this recognition that is referred to in the Sufi saying ‘I searched for God and found only myself; I searched for myself and found only God.’ Thus, the knowledge ‘I am’ is the experience in which the finite mind and infinite awareness intersect. It is a beacon that shines with the presence of awareness in the midst of experience. It is a portal through which the mind passes on its journey back to its source.

Having said that, the phrases ‘self-enquiry’ and ‘self-investigation’ are legitimate because this process is, in most cases, initiated by a question such as, ‘What is it that knows or is aware of my experience?’, ‘Where do thoughts come from?’, ‘What is the nature of the knowing with which all knowledge and experience are known?’, ‘Am I aware?’ or ‘Who am I?’ As the mind ponders these questions, it becomes progressively refined, travelling back through layers of objective experience, gradually purifying itself of all objective, limiting qualities. In this way self-enquiry or self-investigation gradually loses its dynamism and gives way to self-abidance, self-resting or self-remembering, in which its own essential, irreducible essence stands revealed.

Being aware of being aware – abiding in and as the self, resting in the ‘I am’, practising the presence of God – is the only form of meditation or prayer in which the ego, the apparently separate subject of experience, is not maintained. It is, as such, the highest form of meditation or prayer. It is the meditation or prayer for which all other meditations and prayers are preparations.

As long as the dreamed character is focused exclusively on the objective content of her experience, she will never recognise the nature of her own mind or, therefore, the reality of her world, and will never find the peace and happiness for which she longs. In order to know her own nature, she must turn her attention away from the objects of experience, towards that with which they are known. She must know the nature of the knowing with which all knowledge and experience are known. She must become aware of the experience of being aware, which is the essence of her own mind. At night, the sun doesn’t disappear. It continues to shine with the same brightness. It is the earth that has turned away from the sun and, as a result, has fallen into partial darkness. As soon as the earth turns round, so to speak, that part of it that was in darkness lights up.