Lesson 3: Pure Awareness

Awareness itself is void-like. It isn’t any of the stuff that appears in it. It is the faculty by which one has experience, but it is, itself, blank. Think of awareness as the screen on which the movie plays, or the mirror that reflects images but is not those images.

Even though awareness is empty, we can assign a few attributes to it:

It is "space-like." It is the space in which experiences occur. Sometimes the Bönpo (practitioners of Bön Dzogchen) go up on a hillside or out in the open to stare into the clear blue sky. This is a meditation that gives them an impression of the nature of mind—clear and empty space. Sometimes awareness is called "the field of awareness" to emphasize its space-like nature.

It is "luminous." Awareness is a space with inner light. This is the same light that illuminates the objects in your dreams. When you are asleep, your body is lying there in the dark with its eyes closed, but you see a lit-up stage on which your dream unfolds. It can be fully convincing light, even though you are in a pitch-black room. After some reflection, you can realize that you only see inner light, whether in the waking state or asleep. The "luminousness" of physical light (from the sun, lamps, and so forth) is created only within the field of awareness, though few people realize this. Any light you see right now is inner light. The light "out there" doesn’t shine except by virtue of your awareness.

Another attribute of awareness is "knowing presence." You could think of "knowing" and "presence" as separate attributes, but, actually, they are always together, like two sides of the same coin.

This knowing isn't intellectual knowing. It's not about knowing the names of the state capitals or the amount of wheat grown in Kansas. It is direct knowing. It’s the basic knowing that you have when you are having any experience within the subjective field. You just know it when you are aware of something.

Notice that you are present with the object. You are right there knowing it. Sense your own presence. Some people characterize this as being in “union” with the object.

Presence is usually associated with an individual ego (for example, "I am present!"), but this is not always the case. Awareness can be present without the mind forming a separated individuality, though this is pretty rare for most of us. The mind normally formulates a sense of self, the “ego”, and associates it with experiences, thinking, feeling, the body, relationships, and so forth.

One day, in (about) 1972, I was sitting quietly on a sunny deck where I was living in the Santa Cruz Mountains of Northern California. I had just spent about two hours in a sensory deprivation tank (an environment made to limit sensory information coming into the body). My mind was very quiet and awareness just naturally happened to focus on itself. At that moment, how it was making a “me” became obvious. Little by little, "I" let “me” go. Soon there was just pure presence with no mental artifact of a separate individual. That state lasted on and off for perhaps a half-hour or so, after which a “me” became stabilized again. (There is certainly a very strong tendency to be an ego-self!) However, once the ego-self has been evaporated at least once, the belief in it as being an absolute truth is diminished.

[Aside: The subject of the self goes much deeper than what I experienced on that sunny deck. What I experienced is the dissolving of the self that is manufactured by the mind. The issue of the real nature of the self, on which this baggage is hung, is much more profound. That subject is a bit beyond the scope of this little booklet, however.]

There is one other attribute of awareness, a very important one. This is that all experiences arise within the field of awareness. All experiences that you have ever had are experiences that arose within the field of awareness. Awareness is the ground or base of all experience. I encourage you to chew on this until it is perfectly clear and obvious to you.

When something arises in the field of awareness, awareness itself does not change. Awareness is the underlying ability or faculty that makes experiences possible. This awareness has not changed from any experience you have had in this or any other lifetime. Even if you are compulsively focused on a memory or feeling, awareness is still nothing but the capacity to experience. It isn’t altered or damaged.

Experiences arise within the field of awareness and then they complete or just disappear, making room for the next experiences. The experiences you had in the past did this. They came, occupied your subjective field, and then went on their way, back to the void from which they came. They are “impermanent.” All of them, except for the one you are having at this very instant, are actually gone. Records of some of them are stored in your memory so you can experience them again, but the originals went somewhere and are now -- where? Just a part of the warmth of the world.

To summarize:

• Awareness is inherently empty, space-like, and luminous.
• Awareness is filled with knowing presence.
• The attribute of an observable individualized self within the field of awareness is a mental "add-on."
• The nature of awareness does not change with experiences.
• All experiences come and go within the field of awareness.

Was that fun for you? It was fun for me.