Where All Minds Meet
On Love, Death and the Single Field of Consciousness (The Nature of Consciousness #32)
Everything we have explored so far, the nature of consciousness, the way it focuses itself as a finite mind, the way that focusing gives rise to the experience of a separate self, points towards a single far-reaching implication. If consciousness is the indivisible field in which all experience appears, then the boundaries we take to separate one mind from another are not what they seem. They are more like waves on the surface of a single ocean, distinct in form, yet never separate from the water that gives rise to them.
In this instalment, we turn to Chapter 15, ‘The Shared Medium of Mind’, exploring pages 139 through the middle of 142.* Here the understanding that consciousness is one and indivisible reveals its most far-reaching implications: that all finite minds are localisations within a single field of awareness, that love and beauty are the felt experience of this shared ground, and that even the dissolution of the body at death does not interrupt the continuity of the field in which it appeared.
(*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 Unchanging Screen
We all experience three states: waking, dreaming and deep sleep. If these three states could be likened to a movie, an email and a blank screensaver, then consciousness could be likened to the screen. Just as the movie, the email and the blank screensaver are temporary modulations of the continuous screen, so the waking, dreaming and deep sleep states are temporary modulations of ever-present consciousness.
The states of waking, dreaming and deep sleep are only such from the perspective of an apparent entity in one of those states. From the perspective of consciousness itself, which is the only true perspective, it is always in the same condition, accessing a spectrum of its infinite possibilities in the form of various states but never entering any state itself, just as a screen is always in the same condition irrespective of the programmes that are playing on it.
Just as the screen never enters into the movie, the email or the screensaver, so consciousness never enters into any state. And just as all movies, emails and screensavers lie, as it were, in potential within the screen, so the three states of waking, dreaming and deep sleep lie in potential within consciousness. They are the activity of consciousness. Consciousness modulates itself in the form of the waking, dreaming and deep sleep states, while remaining always and only itself.
Consciousness never passes through states. There are only states of mind. It is only the character we seem to be in the waking and dreaming states that passes through states. States are only such from the point of view of the finite mind. For consciousness itself, there are no states.
