Everything is Consciousness...

From: Douglas Mitchell .....Subject: Everything is Consciousness

As the Yoga Vashistha says, "Everything is Consciousness. No-thing exists
outside of Consciousness." How could it? Have you ever experienced anything
apart from experiencing? Sounds like a ridiculous question. But it gets to the
heart of the matter. You are always present in every experience as the
Consciousness/Awareness of the experience. Consciousness is the
empty background and every form in the experience including the sense of
knowing. It is always there as the all embracing presence which knows no
preference or judgment about the content of experience. Consciousness is not
like a supposed deity which judges, intervenes, creates, sustains, and
destroys. No such deity ever
existed. Only Consciousness contains and pervades everything. Consciousness is
all that is. Nisargadatta would add to the above statement that nothing exists
outside of Consciousness, "You are that no-thing upon which Consciousness
appears and disappears." Just as in sleep there is dream consciousness which
has a dream body with senses and perceptions of a world that appear as real as
the waking body and world. Then Consciousness disappears in deep sleep, only to
reappear as waking Consciousness. There is no difference between dream
Consciousness and waking Consciousness. Everything contained within is a
projection of Consciousness with a sense of knowing or presence. Similarly as
in deep sleep when there is no
Consciousness, so too is your absolute nature prior to and beyond
Consciousness. But this no-thing-ness, called the Absolute for namesake, is
prior to and beyond all experiencing. It is known only by Consciousness as the
absence of Consciousness. But even the knowing of absence is a knowing within
Consciousness. So the Absolute cannot be experienced as some-'thing'. So we
are back to "no-thing exists outside of Consciousness". One cannot prove the
Absolute. One can only be the Absolute as pure being with no subject-I and no
objective form, not even emptiness for that too is form. Remember the Buddhist
Heart Sutra? "Form is none other than emptiness. Emptiness is none other than
form." This is a very subtle understanding. It equates form and emptiness.
Emptiness is not the same as no-thing-ness. Emptiness is the background within
Consciousness. No-thing-ness is the 'nature' of the Absolute as well as
Consciousness which appears upon 'it'. Have you ever seen Consciousness apart
from its forms, including emptiness? Consciousness cannot be grasped, measured,
or observed apart from aware Consciousness. So what is Consciousness? It is the
awakeness of the Absolute. To use other words, the Absolute is undifferentiated
Consciousness and awakeness is
differentiated Consciousness with a bifurcation into subject and object within
a single awareness. So this brings us back to the Yoga Vashistha's statement
that Consciousness is all there is, whether as undifferentiated (no
subject/object) or differentiated (knowing subject and object-ive form). Know
yourself to be this Consciousness! This Consciousness is one. The same
Consciousness is peering through your eyes and mine and through the sensing of
all sentient beings. It pervades the apparent universe. I say apparent because
it is of the nature of an illusion, a dream. The universe does not exist
outside of your experiencing of it in Consciousness. And Consciousness is
no-thing-ness. And you are THAT!