78. All Knowledge is Ignorance

There was never any journey. I am, as I always was. I live in the void beyond being and non-being, beyond consciousness. This void is also fullness; do not pity me. It is like a man saying: 'I have done my work, there is nothing left to do'.

My mind ceased producing events. The ancient and ceaseless search stopped - I wanted nothing, expected nothing - accepted nothing as my own. There was no 'me' left to strive for. Even the bare 'I am' faded away.

The other thing that I noticed was that I lost all my habitual certainties. Earlier I was sure of so many things, now I am sure of nothing. But I feel that I have lost nothing by not knowing, because all my knowledge was false. My not knowing was in itself knowledge of the fact that all knowledge is ignorance, that 'I do not know' is the only true statement the mind can make.

Take the idea 'I was born'. You may take it to be true. It is not.

You were never born, nor will you ever die. It is the idea that was born and shall die, not you. By identifying yourself with it you became mortal. Just like in a cinema all is light, so does consciousness become the vast world.

Look closely, and you will see that all names and forms are but transitory waves on the ocean of consciousness, that only consciousness can be said to be, not its transformations. In the immensity of consciousness a light appears, a tiny point that moves rapidly and traces shapes, thoughts and feelings, concepts and ideas, like the pen writing on paper. And the ink that leaves a trace is memory.

You are that tiny point and by your movement the world is ever re-created. Stop moving, and there will be no world. Look within and you will find that the point of light is the reflection of the immensity of light in the body, as the sense 'I am'. There is only light, all else appears.

You have your own private mind, woven with memories, held together by desires and fears.

To know that the known cannot be me nor mine, is liberation enough. Freedom from self-identification with a set of memories and habits, the state of wonder at the infinite reaches of the being, its inexhaustible creativity and total transcendence, the absolute fearlessness born from the realisation of the illusoriness and transiency of every mode of consciousness - flow from a deep and inexhaustible source. To know the source as source and appearance as appearance, and oneself as the source only is self-realisation.

Nobody can say: ‘I am the witness'. The ‘I am' is always witnessed. The state of detached awareness is the witness-consciousness, the 'mirror-mind'. It rises and sets with its object and thus it is not quite the real. Whatever its object, it remains the same, hence it is also real. It partakes of both the real and the unreal and is therefore a bridge between the two.