The Wave, the Ring, and What Is Real

A student asks about the fear of losing individuality in the metaphor of the wave dissolving into the ocean. A second student asks why searching for the self feels effortful and never enough, which leads to an exploration of knowingness, beingness, and sat-chit-ananda.

Yes. The way I hear it in you, as you bring it up, it's one of the tricks and traps of thought. It is in service to the illusion, or to egoic interest. There is an experience of not wanting to lose something. And you can only know what you lose and what you don't when you're willing to lose it all.

The mystic you mention is challenging another assumption: how do you know the ocean doesn't have wave qualities? Because it does. The wave qualities are the ocean; they are part of the nature of the ocean. But at some point, it's simply a matter of what you want more: the wave qualities you don't want to lose, or to see the truth and know what is most real. That's why, ultimately, resisting truth is a trick of the mind.

I can't convince you that you will have what you want and not lose what you don't want to lose. I don't know how it will be for you. All I can do is point in a direction of more truth, and it's up to you to decide, or to want it. It's strange, because it isn't really so much about deciding or wanting. It happens naturally: you either want it or you don't, and you want it when you want it. It's not as though the wave decides to dissolve.

A better metaphor

In fact, the whole metaphor of the wave dissolving is fiction. A wave doesn't dissolve. A drop doesn't dissolve into an ocean either, although in a sense one could say a drop connects with the ocean and merges. The wave is the better metaphor for what we are. A drop implies that there actually is a separation, and then an end to that separation. To me that is an old, improper, or currently useless metaphor. It's not a good representation of the map of reality that is possible.

If you were into physics, I would say it's like Newtonian physics, which has been upgraded by Einstein's physics and quantum physics. Newtonian physics is somewhat correct, but not really, and so it gets upgraded. The same goes for the metaphor of a drop that encounters the ocean and dissolves. It's not a good metaphor.

The better metaphor is that we are an infinite ocean, in which there are also waves in some form. And then we believe we are a wave. Identification is that belief, the attachment to a particular wave in the ocean. So, in that metaphor, you might realize that the wave-like qualities don't disappear. But when you no longer believe you are a particular wave, things change fundamentally.

Searching for the entity

Because you can't find something that's not there. The more you try to find something that's not there, the more pointless effort is invested.

Suppose I'm looking for a ring that I assume is lost in a room, but it's not in the room. I can spend two hours looking and not find it, yet I still don't know; it might be there somewhere. So I have to look again and again and again. And imagine this room is not a small room but an entire neighborhood. You could look forever and not find the ring, yet never be convinced it's not there. At some point that becomes pointless.

What can be done, at some point, is to stop looking for something that's not there: a center, an agency, a real something that you are. Instead, start looking at what you are in reality. Rather than looking for the ring, start looking for the true nature of what you are, instead of the illusion of what you thought you were. Instead of trying to clarify the illusory nature more and more, try to see what is real. Today's meditation was actually in that direction.

The problem with the words

I use the word knowingness; others use beingness; and more and more today the word used is consciousness. I avoid that one a little for semantic reasons. When I say knowingness, it's the same as what others mean by consciousness, but consciousness is a complicated word because there are so many interpretations of what it is.

Knowingness is also problematic, because of how we normally use the word knowing: knowing facts and logic, understanding physics, science, math. I'm using it differently. It points to something fundamental for which I don't have a better word. I've thought about how to combine words. Seeing is also close, but seeing implies vision only, not sound. That's a problem as well. Being implies non-being. Knowingness, in the way I'm referring to it, doesn't have an opposite, and it doesn't have a thing that is known. It doesn't imply something that is known. In knowingness, there is no distinction between the sound and the knowing of the sound. You could say the sound itself is the knowing of it.

So when we say "I," in the illusion and the confusion, we refer to I the body, I the mind. But we are confusing things. There is something we know that is I: this knowingness, right here, right now. And we interpret it. We assume that the knowingness is the body and the mind, that what knows is the body and the mind. It's not.

So instead of looking for what you seem to be in the illusion, drop that effort and turn: "Okay, I'm not finding what I thought I was. What am I really?" And it's right here. It's this.

The answer is "this"

To the question "What am I? Who am I?" the only answer possible in words is: this. Then you can ask, "But this what? What part of this?" That's where you can't say more. It's all of this: everything, everything and nothing. But it's this.

You can clarify more of its qualities by continuing to look at it. You can realize, more and more, how you still tend to collapse the answer onto something within what this is. You can realize, "Oh, when I say 'this,' I collapse it into that which perceives and not what is perceived, or what is here but not what is there, or sensation and not sound," and so on. But this is everything. And when I say everything, I also need to say nothing. Both, and neither, simultaneously, as far as the logic of the mind goes.

But if the belief is that there's a ring in this neighborhood, can you fully prove that it's not there? No.

Proof and the null hypothesis

Even in science, there is such a thing as actual proof of a hypothesis. I can prove the ring is in the room if it's in the room and I find it. That's proof. But if it's not in the room, or if it's somewhere in a neighborhood, it's not realistic for me to explore every inch of every house and every garden.

This is how the mind works. The mind can be extremely complex. It's not realistic to unpack every single illusion the mind can create, since it can go on creating new illusions infinitely. You can't reach proof by examining every single possibility when there are infinite possibilities of illusion.

So in a scientific approach, you take a lot of measurements and then calculate the odds that the ring is there and you haven't found it with that number of measurements. It's like testing the null hypothesis. You look hard enough and fail to find what you're looking for, until you have a lot of confidence that you would have found it if it were there. But there is still a possibility that it's there.

What I'm saying is that you're looking for the ring in the constructs of thoughts, sensations, and objects. You're looking for what you are in objects and appearances. And I'm saying: put that to rest, even for a bit. You can always go back to it. But start looking for what you are somewhere else, not in the constructs and appearances of thought or sensation. Look for it in empty seeing, as one teacher calls it, or in knowingness, which others call consciousness. See if that starts to resonate more as what we call "I."

It's what is real, that which knows. In one teacher's definition, it is the reality that is hearing right now, that which is real, which is knowing right now. And by real I mean that which does not change. Thoughts, sensations, sounds, sights: all of that is changing. What is it that knows the changing? That is what's real. And you're not going to find it in thoughts. You're not going to find it in sensations.

I'm saying: look for what you call "I," and look for it in the knowing. In a sense, this is part of the process. This is where I say there's a process, because there's a progression of understanding. It's what has been called consciousness aware of itself, or awareness aware of itself. That is a method: awareness, or consciousness, or knowingness, knowing itself. But it's not two. It's the recognition, "Oh, this knowingness," or, without words, simply "Oh." There is no distance. It's knowingness recognizing knowingness as absolute, as fundamental, and as empty.

Sat, chit, ananda

Other traditions speak of consciousness and beingness: the aspect of knowing and the aspect of being meeting. Something is. There is this. There is something rather than nothing. That is extremely fundamental. There is an isness you could call being, or Self, as they say, with a capital S. And then there is knowing that something is.

It's very simple and very fundamental. That's why the mind goes looking for it somewhere, but it's actually extremely simple. There is something, and there is knowing that there is something. That's sat and chit.

And the recognition of that union, sat-chit, as fundamentally what this is, is ananda, which is peace, or bliss. That is in contrast to collapsing identification onto what is called nama-rupa: names and forms.

The recognition of sat-chit. Then there is ananda, which is peace, or bliss, and the recognition: "Oh, I am not nama-rupa. I am not forms and names."

"I am" and "there is something"

Another method is to recognize that there is something. Something's happening; something's here. That's irrefutable. Now, I can also say, "I am." Is there a difference between "I am" and "there is something rather than nothing"? Are those two separate realities? Could it be that reality is, and I am, but I come and go? Could reality remain while I disappear? Is that possible? Or could I remain while reality disappears? I'm not talking about reality as form. I'm just talking about the fact that there is something.

If "I am" remains, reality disappearing makes no sense, because "I am" remains, and so there is reality: there is something rather than nothing. I am. And vice versa: if there is something rather than nothing but I disappear, then reality remaining while I disappear is a conceptual construct. It's not possible, because there would be no knowing of reality if I disappeared.

So the more you look at this, philosophically at first and then in experience, the more you have to conclude that the reality that is this and the reality that I am are the same. It is the one reality. That is knowingness and beingness meeting. The knowingness that I am and the beingness that this is are the same reality. It's talked about as a marriage, a meeting, but only in the sense of recognition: "Oh, I realize this is true. It was always true." And in that recognition, what is born is ananda, which is peace.

Within that, what is known is the appearances, rupa. Rupa is form: what appears within reality, within knowingness. At first you can think of reality as the appearances (sensations, perceptions, thoughts, sounds) and knowingness as the knowing of them, as though they were two. But then you realize they are the same. They are two names for one reality.

And then there are the forms themselves, rupa, and the names: sound, sensation, perception, pain, frustration, all the names of all the forms, which seem to create infinite things, infinite manifestation. All of it is sat-chit-ananda. Where it all comes from is the reality that is this.

A settling

There is a settling, yes. A settling can happen the more you realize this, stop looking in the rupas, in the constructs, and simply start to realize it's already this. It's all of this, and nothing. All of it and none of it. Not all of it and then none of it, but simultaneously all and nothing.

One teacher said something like this: "In love, I recognize that I am everything. In wisdom, I recognize that I am nothing. And between those two, my life flows."

That's sat-chit: knowingness and beingness. Beingness is everything. Knowingness is nothing; it's just knowing. Whatever appears is known. It's empty seeing. Empty seeing: I am.

There are all these subtleties and different ways to play with these words. Not randomly: there's a particular way I'm using and exploring them, and I also correct myself when I see that a certain phrasing could lead to misinterpretation. This is my way of communicating. Whenever there are words, there is going to be some miscommunication, because concepts are being used to point to something that isn't conceptual. That's why different ways of saying it, and different teachers, can be very helpful.

Yes, exactly. Let me say a little more about that.

Where the fundamental illusion is born

That separation of knowing and being is exactly where the fundamental illusion is born. Being means something that is, but we project it onto appearances, onto the experience of objects and things. Beingness gets attributed to everything that has form, and knowing gets attributed to the mind, which is located in the body.

Then there is this separation: something that knows, the body-mind, and that which is known, the objects in the universe. Those are the rupas, the forms. So knowingness gets placed on certain forms, the body-mind, and what is known, the reality of being, gets placed out there on other forms that are not the body-mind.

Bear in mind as well that form, which is known, comes and goes; it is born and dies. Therefore the assumption is that knowingness itself comes and goes, is born and dies. All of those are false assumptions, because what can be seen is that knowingness and beingness are the same reality, and that reality does not require form, does not require rupa.

There is fundamental knowing-being, and then what appears: sounds, and the hearing of them, but not as two separate things. Sound is hearing. If there is no sound, hearing as such isn't there. There is just pure knowingness.