An Explanation of Reality

‘Morgenlandschaft (Aurora)’ – Adam Elsheimer, 1606 – WikiArt

You may not be interested in these matters. You may be an atheist, a non-believer. You may have an aversion towards all things spiritual. It doesn’t matter. You will get it all the same, that the world, the universe, everything — including yourself — are not there. Nothing is really there. Not in the way you had imagined. This is not like everybody has been telling you. Not at all. And you will see it with your logic, with your scepticism — a golden value by the way —, with your Cartesian, rational, solid mind. I will explain. You just have to listen carefully. There is no world, and I will expose to you how it is so. I will demonstrate it to you.

You may think there are billions of other people, countless other versions of suffering, a multitude of experiences, a world teeming with crowds and achievements, and all manner of things, from the most sublime to the most appalling. And there are indeed multiple points of views. But all of the world’s sufferings will always ever be experienced as yourself. It will be for whoever you may be now, and be experienced in whatever experience you may be experiencing now. The whole world is always only a first person experience of the world — in whoever you happen to be at this moment. When another person experiences suffering, it will then be this person’s only reality, and so on. So you will always ever be yourself. There are no ways to be another than yourself, to have another experience that your own experience of being yourself — which you experience right now. So the totality of humanity is contained in that one subjective experience of being. It is all there — in being. The billions of subjectivities, the myriad of experiences, the unspeakable suffering, the expansion and the veiling, the gruesome and the awe, the glory and sacredness of truth, and the compelling ignorance. Every experience of every possible being in this world is in essence made of that one experience of pure, ethereal being. And suffering is when you don’t know that.

You may think that the world is made of countless objects, of mountains and trees, of houses and parking lots for your cars. But the existence of such things is always correlated to the experiencing of them. Without such experiencing, they are not present. So the whole world of things material, the whole supposed landscape of your life, is limited to sense perceptions, to what you are seeing and hearing, and in last extremity, to your being aware of them. Without awareness, and without the experience of being which supports this awareness, the world is stripped from its apparent existence. What is this world in last result, if it is conditioned to your experiencing it? What kind of world is it, to be so brittle and uncertain? Is its appearance in any way other than the appearance of your self as being, which is nothing but the disappearance of otherness? What kind of reality does it have? So whatever you see only speaks of yourself. Whatever you hear is contained inside you, and its existing is dependent on your being. In this way, nothing exists without your being first. All things are only an appearance in and of being. Their reality cannot appear outside of yourself. They are therefore of you, made of your own one reality. They are like multiple waves of your own ocean-self. Appearances modulating themselves on the appearance of your own undivided being. In fact, we are the world we live in.

You may think of yourself as a world traveler, but you have never been anywhere but where you are. Here is the only place where you will ever be. The world is not made of different places, different corners where you can go and be somewhere else, in another place than where you are. This is not possible. There is only one place where you can ever be, which is here, in this very place of experiencing. Going anywhere is in fact of your own imagination. There is only one place for you to be in, which means that wherever you are is always in and as your own place of being. You can never be anywhere outside your own being, your own experiencing. And there is nothing strange that your body appears to be moving in space, nothing significant in this. For your body is only able to move inside the place where you already are, where your own being is. Your body can never leave you, it can only travel in the space that you are, which is yourself — being. Yourself as being is the entirety of the world you travel in, where all your countless adventures take place. Not a world out there but the very world that is yourself as being. Please be sure of this. See it as your very fact of living. You have never travelled outside your field of experiencing, never away from your home as being.

You may think that there have been many yesterdays in your life, and that many tomorrows await you. You may think that way. But you will only ever be now, in this present moment. No matter the strength with which yesterday appears in your mind, you will never find it as an experience. Yesterday can always only be now. It cannot exist outside of its happening now. Nothing ever happened in a moment that wasn’t now. It is all there, in this present moment, in this experiencing that you have now. Yesterday is only an idea, a memory, which you have now. You will never find anything happening in the past, except in your own present experience. The past is the experience of now. And so is the future. It is now. It cannot be later than now, for no matter how hard you may try, you will never ever find a time which is ahead of now, ahead of yourself. Now is the time for all possible experience, the only one that you will ever have. Feel it. Feel that you cannot have an experience outside of now. This is not possible. This is logic. This is important to understand. So now is the very expression of your being. It is not a moment in time. Time is an idea that you have superimposed on the now, which is the only time you can ever be in, or in which you can experience anything. It is always now: the entirety of that life you have been in, with all its innumerable deeds, including all the time necessary to enfold the existence of the universe. All in the now. Everything always happens now. Not a time has ever existed outside of now, and has ever taken place outside this very being which is your being too.

You may think that you have a rich inner world. That your experience is crowded with thoughts, feelings, sensations, worries — the whole story of yourself — in which you are caught. You may think that your life is ridden with problems, hopes, beliefs, limitations, failures, and your longing to understand and heal. This is — you think — the drama of your life, with all its content, all the sadness that goes with it, and the corresponding desire for happiness. But look again. For all these are in fact a world only accessible to your being aware of it. All the paraphernalia of your life, all your ups and downs, all your ignorance, all your enlightenment projects, are contained in and recognised by yourself. They are a unique set of expressions that have sprouted out of yourself as being, which you are aware of. Your inner world is no different than the outer world. It is all a world of knowing. A world of things dependant on the knowing of them. A pseudo reality crushed by the overwhelming stature of knowing that is giving it birth and sustenance. So your limited self, which is nothing but the product of the content of consciousness, which thinks of itself as having a separate reality, can only be recognised as having no sound, valid, tenable reality other than the reality of that which is before it, which is holding it, and which ultimately lends it its essential nature, namely the ultimate power of consciousness or pure, inalterable being.

So all your suffering, and other people’s suffering, all the lives and objects in this world, with their apparent characteristics and colours, and your dreams of a future, and your pride or regret of past deeds, and the landscape of your own conscience, with its thoughts, and its invention of your own person or self separate from everybody and everything else — all these are only viable as the temporary, unsubstantial expression of your one true, inescapable nature: eternal being. And being is not an experience that we can point to. It is pure, ultimate subjectivity. It is what is resting here as your deepest self, before every other possible thing coming into existence. You are reduced to being only this being yourself, when everything that is characterising your experience has been recognised as dependent on this one being only, a being that is common to all beings and all things under the sun. So in this way, there is nothing here other than this very primordial, immaterial, profoundly peaceful being that you are. Some have called it God. It may not be the God that you had in mind. But it is the only God you will ever find. For God cannot be outside yourself. Where would she go? Where could he be? Since there is only you? Only this experience. Only this being. Nothing else. Nothing at all.

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Text by Alain Joly

Paintings by Adam Elsheimer (1578-1610)

and Pierre-Henri de Valenciennes (1750-1819)

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Websites:
– Adam Elsheimer (Wikipedia)
– Pierre-Henri de Valenciennes (Wikipedia) 

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