Timeless Awareness and the Deathless Presence

Dear friends, I have posted endless videos on the mystery of life and how that's tied to the mystery of death as well. And I want to delve a little deeper today into this whole thing of where do we go after we die? People ask this a lot and it's very interesting and complex question because when you say where do we go when we die? It implies a location in space and time. Location space time actually doesn't really exist. It's a human construct. You know, we created these human construct by giving names and language and numbers to our experiences, so Greenwich Meantime latitude longitude Nation states. These are all human constructs. Furthermore, even the idea of a physical body is a human construct and the idea of a physical universe is a human construct. And as I've said before we translate experiences, which are essentially Vṛttis in consciousness, fluctuations in consciousness, we conceive out of those fluctuations, a physical body located in space time and the physical body changing as well. And that's all human constructs. So when you say, where do we go after we die? You are applying an argument taking the dreamscape that you're in and the dream body that you have as fundamental reality. So where do we go? Let me share that with a deeper explanation. because we don't go anywhere. In fact, we are there now, and there itself is not a location in space or time. Okay? So in my view, our true nature, and this is not my view by the way, it's the view of many, many luminaries and explorers of consciousness that have existed for a long time. In any case, in this view, our true nature is timeless awareness. So nothing actually goes anywhere at physical death. Only a particular configuration of experience ceases. In the same way that a dream scene vanishes. While the dreamer remains every memory and experience you’re having. Now. Right now a structured activity in mind that appears in and depends entirely on the ever present awareness, which does not come and go with any particular state. So if awareness is not a product of the body, but the invariant background in which all bodily states arise, then birth and death describe changing appearances, changing dreamscapes, not the essence that knows them. Advaita Vedānta for example, says that the self nature is consciousness that does not come and go. What is born and dies is only the gross and subtle configurations, body-mind, subtle body-mind, intellect, ego. Although the remnants of experience remain as Saṁskāras, Vāsanās, Karma. So from this standpoint, there is only conscious presence itself. Once you get that, then from that standpoint, asking where do we go when we die, is like asking where did the movie go when the projector turned off? The scene cease, but the capacity to illuminate them was never spatially located in the film to begin with. So in reality, the place of being that remains after we die is a presence. It's a non-local domain from where all experience emerges. So it's non-dual awareness. And if reality is that you are never actually separate from it and you cannot move outside it, the universe and all objects including body and mind are described and are as awareness knowing itself. So whatever place that might seem to lead to would still only ever be another modification within that same awareness. And in this sense, the afterlife is not a different territory, but the same field of awareness that is presently looking at this video before, during, and after any particular life story. So even our memory and experiences are dependent on this state of awareness. So philosophically and phenomenologically any experience you can point to sensations thoughts memories presupposes that there is something present to which it appears. Contemporary discussions of consciousness often distinguish between consciousness as a basic field of awareness. Formless irreducible infinite borderless fundamental. So that's the basic field of awareness and the specific experiential contents in it. Memories and perceptions that arise within it. The contents change, but without the field of awareness, there's no being conscious of anything. So even in very short timescales, our experience of succession and memory involves present experience depending on the just past, what just happened a moment ago, which remains co-present in a primitive form of remembering. But the whole temporal structure still stands within a single continuous awareness. Okay so if this seems a little clearer now, recall the childhood image and the image, emotional and narrative all reconstitute now. They're known only because a silent awareness is present in which past ness shows up as a current mental experience or a current mental appearance. The same applies to immediate experience, sounds, rights, and thoughts form a stream. Yet each segment of the stream is only a segment relative to the unbroken non segmented awareness that witnesses it. So then within this framework, physical death is a radical change in the pattern of experience, not annihilation of the awareness to which all experience appears. Just as dreamless sleep involves the disappearance of manifest content. While awareness as your true nature remains, that can be understood as a more thorough cessation of particular contents without touching the underlying reality. Therefore, the claim that I'm making, we don't go anywhere upon physical death and the claim hat we are there now is coherent. What we are fundamentally never left, never arrived, and is the necessary condition for every memory and experience that is currently occurring. So let's do a short meditation on this. Sit in a comfortable position. Eyes closed if that feels natural. Notice the simple fact that you're aware, not what you're aware of. Just that awareness is present. sounds, sensations in the body, thoughts, moving, fading, returning in new forms. Let all of this be exactly as it is. No need to fix, change, or improve anything. What you're doing right now is only this recognizing that awareness is already here. Now, gently shift awareness from the contents of experience to the fact of experiencing. Instead of focusing on the sound, feel the knowing of the sound. Instead of focusing on the thought, feel, the knowing of the thought. Ask silently very simply, what is it that is aware of all of this? What is it? Do not look for an image, a shape, or a sensation as the answer. Anything you notice is something being known, not the knower itself. Just rest in this open, quiet knowing. Open quiet knowing. It has no age. It is not located in the head, nor in the chest, nor any point in space. It is simply present. Notice how awareness does not come and go. Even as experience changes, the sound appears, stays briefly disappears, the sensation appears, shifts, fades. A memory arises then dissolves, but the knowing of them does not appear and disappear in the same way. The screen of awareness is here before, during, and after each scene. Now ask yourself gently, softly, has this awareness ever been absent? Look to your direct experience. Gaps in attention, lapses in memory, but did awareness itself ever leave or is it that only particular experiences come and go within it? Rest as the sense of being the unmoving background in which every moment appears. Now without forcing anything, bring to mind the idea of what we call my physical death. Let any natural fear, images, or assumptions briefly show themselves. You don't have to get rid of them. There are also just appearances in awareness. See if you can view death as one more experience. Right now, it is a thought image arising in this field of knowing, so ask quietly this image of death. What is it appearing in? Notice, even the idea I will die is just another movement in the same seamless or on the same seamless screen. All scenes change, childhood scenes, yesterday’s scenes, today's scenes, and one day the scene of this body's last breath. What does not share their fate is this bare, simple knowing in which every scene appears. There’s no need to imagine a future, just see right now, where could awareness go into? What could it vanish if everything that appears already appears within it? Let this recognition soften. The usual tightening around the word death, not as a belief, but as a quiet intuition. What I am as awareness does not travel. So, you know, even when I physically traveled from say, New York City to Delhi, both human constructs, okay? Even as the body-mind seems to travel, awareness does not travel. Only the scenes change. Now gently recall a memory, perhaps a neutral one, like brushing your teeth yesterday. Walking down the street, see the memory arise, images, feelings, maybe a bit of narrative. Notice the memory is happening now its pastness is an appearance and present awareness. So ask gently, without this present awareness, could that memory appear at all? See that the memory is a ripple in the same field that is knowing sounds and sensations right now, the past is a current pattern in awareness, so is every expectation of the future. Every strand of your life story, every intimate moment, every loss, every joy, all of it is held right now as subtle movements in this one indivisible presence. Rest in the felt sense, that awareness, the ground and container of every memory and every perception. It is not dependent on any particular one of them. Now gently turn toward the felt sense of what we call me. Where is this me that believes it is born, moves through time and will one day die? Look for it. Is it a sensation in the body? A cluster of thoughts, an image of a face, or a name. See that any candidate you find is just another object in awareness. It is known and what is known cannot be the knower. Stay with the simple scene. Thoughts about me arise and fall. Emotions about me and my life arise and fall. Even the sense of being a separate subject can thicken and thin. Yet awareness itself does not thicken thin or wave. It is like the sky to which no cloud can truly belong. Let identity relax from I’m this particular body mind into the more spacious intuition. I’m the aware space in which this body mind appears. No need to force it as a belief. Simply touch it as a possibility, a fragrance. Now let the idea of time become soft. Past present and future are ways of organizing experiences. They’re only ever known now. Whatever you call before and whatever you call after, arises thoughts and images. In this present awareness. If awareness itself is not in time. Then it cannot be waiting for a future event called Death to become what it truly is. It is fully itself now. So sense into this, I’m not moving towards some ultimate state. I’m the stillness in which all states move. Let this be a gentle wordless trust. You do not need to go anywhere upon death. You’re not going anywhere now. Appearance travels, awareness does not. For the next few breaths, stop all inquiry and practice. No more questions, no more analysis. Just rest as this open, silent knowing. Let sounds be sounds, sensations be sensations. Thoughts be thoughts. So. you don't go anywhere when you die. You are there now and there is not a place in time or a location in space. It is that in which space, time, causality bodies minds all co-arise and co-subside. Aham Brahmāsmi