Subject and Object...

In grammar, sentences are built up basically from three things: a subject, a verb, and an object, with the subject acting upon the object through the verb. A sentence is not considered complete unless it has these three things, this relationship between the subject and the object. In metaphysics, every experience also requires a subject and an object--a person or a thing who is affected by or produces an action on a second entity. All statements about human experiences must include this subject-object relationship. Thus, in the relationship between a man and his thoughts, the man is the subject and the thoughts are the objects. In Oriental metaphysics, a similar relationship holds good--except that the subject is there called the seer, the object is called the seen, and seeing describes the relationship between the two. All existence in the time-space order as experienced by a human being necessarily has these three elements within it. There is no subject without an object, no seer without a seen plus the relationship or the action between them. They are always linked together. If however we look beyond this existence to the timeless spaceless Reality, it is obvious that there can be no such relationship therein, for it is completely nondual, the Reality which never changes, which has no second thing. We learn from mentalism that this Reality is Mind. If we are ever to find it we know that it cannot be found as if it were a second thing, with us as subject and it as object. In that sense we can never find it, but only substitutes which themselves are in duality. We have indeed to set up a search for the kind of consciousness where there is no object to be experienced and therefore where there is no subject-ego to receive the experience. Such is the unified consciousness which is none other than Mind itself. We can use this criterion not only with reference to our experiences of the world but also with reference to our inner mystical experiences and check from this on what level they really are.

Notebooks Category 28: The Alone > Chapter 2: Our Relation To the Absolute > # 135......... Paul Brunton