Piet to Heloisa and Rod

Heloisa and Rod,

Heloisa, thank you for your vivid description of spontaneous shifts from interacting with others to being with them in a far more direct way, without the usual subject-object separation. Just talking about nonduality or transcending the subject-object split can be very dry and abstract, but your illustration shows how wonderful it all can be!

You asked whether your description was similar to the first type of shift that I mentioned, from seeing everything as given as matter to seeing everything as given as consciousness. Perhaps it is closer to the second type of shift that I sketched, from self-based consciousness to more impersonal awareness. Perhaps hyper-personal is a better term than impersonal, since the transcendence of the subject-object split seems to make personal contact more vivid, exactly by deemphasizing the notion of isolated persons.

As for the third shift, this would drop any reference to space and time and separation of any kind. It would mean a direct `test' of the working hypothesis, by realizing what could be pointed to as timeless presence, or suchness, as Buddhists call it. Language is getting very tricky here. After the second shift, already any usage of personal language becomes problematic. Who is it that is making the shift from appearance to timeless presence?

When I make the shift from matter to conscious experience, I leave behind my identification with me as a material body. When I shift from experience to appearance, I leave behind my identification with me as a subject. So what is left there, that can make the shift from appearance to suchness? Certainly not a self or ego or subject of any kind.

The only correct way to even try to speak about this would be to say that suchness is clarifying suchness. Presence is lifting the veils to a more clear realization of presence, and when the veils are lifted, it becomes clear that presence was the only player all along, presenting the magic appearance of everything else, from sheer appearance to the experience of the subject-object split, to interpreting everything as a dance of matter and energy.

This brings me back to your question about playing a game within a game. My intention in introducing the working hypothesis is to provide a way to try to trigger the third shift. Of course, we cannot make the shift happen, as little as we can force ourselves to fall in love or to obtain a new scientific insight. What we can do is open ourselves for such new possibilities, trying not to stand in the way, blocking new realizations. Our ordinary way of dealing with life is like a habitual game in which we pretend to be limited. Within that game we can play yet another game, namely that we have made the third shift already, and we are now exploring its consequences. The idea is that perhaps spontaneously the two games will cancel each other, and presence will show its real face!

Piet