The One Seems to Become the Many
On the Self That Believes It Lives Inside a Body (The Nature of Consciousness #43)
Consciousness is a realm of pure potential but cannot know its own potential without dividing into a knower and a known, a finite mind and a world, exactly as a mind at night divides into a dreamed character and a dreamed world. This week’s instalment follows this movement from being into existence, showing that what appears as a multiplicity of separate selves and things is in each case the activity of one infinite consciousness.
This week we’re exploring pages 170 to 172, from the top of page 170 to the section break on page 172,* tracing the finite mind’s own account of matter through to the true identity of the self that believes it lives inside a body.
(*The page numbers indicated here each week refer to the original publication of the physical book – they may vary slightly from more recent versions, owing to the publisher’s design modifications.)
The Birth of Knowing
Consciousness is a field of unlimited potential. Every form that has ever appeared or has yet to appear, lies folded within it, undifferentiated, unmanifest. Nothing in this potential is missing, and yet none of it can be known directly by consciousness itself, for to know something one must stand apart from it, and consciousness, being all that is, cannot stand apart from itself.
It is consciousness itself that freely assumes the form of the finite mind in order to bring manifestation out of being into existence.
In order to realise the potential that lies enfolded within it, consciousness must divide, or seem to divide, itself in two: a subject that knows and an object that is known, a finite mind and a universe, an inside self and an outside world. This subject-object relationship is the mechanism whereby all knowledge and experience are made possible, with the exception of the awareness of being, in which the subject and object are one and the same.
