Is the world a projection of your longing to be free?

Is the world a projection of your longing to be free?

Yes, you are the master of imagination who has enslaved himself through forgetfulness.

We, being truly all, cannot resonate with any fragment.

Don’t you remember?

Picture this:

A man walking in a thick fog, he can only see one meter ahead on all sides. His senses reflect impressions to his mind, his mind is aware of the landscape within a one-meter radius. He carries his sphere of knowledge and the horizon of knowledge with him wherever he goes.

The fog is invisible to him because it is made of tiny floating particles endlessly reflecting his sphere of limited clarity. He is the reflective centre of this tiny self-reflecting world.

If the fog thins, he gains a wider circular horizon of perception and knowledge. But he is still fixed in the centre.

Outside the circle of perception is what he calls ignorance (or nothingness), but he is unaware that inside the circle too is only partial knowledge (ignorance). Because his individual existence is reflecting endlessly in the limiting fog, his world seems infinite. Even if the fog lifts completely, he still sees the wider horizon from his separate point of view, never seeing the whole but getting lost in the details.

The horizon still appears separate from the centre, which is him. So, to know more he reaches outwards, and he keeps moving through “the world,” carrying his dome of limited perception and endless reflection with him wherever he goes. He is trapped in his perception.

Driven by the hope to one day see the complete picture, to find himself, he pieces together a larger and more complex picture as he moves outwards. The movement creates this projection of the self-reflected mind; we call it world.

The nature of this world is not-knowing and disconnection, because it is a projection of the perception of being separate and of the ignorance of wholeness. He does not know that the paths are infinite in all directions and that we can never know all of them, but they all have the potential of leading home.

With age, man often begins to think  because the elders have told him this will happen to a respectable person, that he has -“seen it all.” He believes he knows what there is to know and he surrounds himself with people who agree with his limited perception, that this is everything there is to know.

Because of this communal blindness and the wish to appear intelligent, many lose their curiosity and inquisitiveness, they stop moving, they stop seeing new angles, new reflections of themselves. Their world becomes crystalized, it solidifies because they think they know it all. They get the impression of sitting in the middle of a solid sphere of unchanging reality, they call it the “true” outer world, but they do not know that this solidity is an illusion created by stagnation, by being stuck in a limited world view. We mistake stagnation for stillness.

We think that the predictability of our limited world is a sign of wisdom.

A person like that does not know that stopping the inquisitiveness into the reflection of his mind, is not the final step. He stops half-way because he thinks he has arrived. He sits down on a step of the stairway, looks on his fixed view and says, “This is it.” He does not know that he needs to find true stillness, as well as turn his attention to himself, direct his consciousness toward pure consciousness.

He must observe the source of the seed, not only analyse and name the tree.

To gain wisdom, observe the outer world to know its source and turn inwards to become aware of your most subtle level of existence.

You must know what you are.

So, what are we?

Let us begin by imagining something that most people think they definitely are not.

Imagine that something as being infinite and eternal, as limitless and beyond time. Because it has no limits in space or time, it naturally has no beginning or end. No beginning and no end, means it has not appeared at a certain point in time; it has always been and will never not be. It is beyond time. Because it has no limit in space, it is formless and beyond space.

Imagine that. You can’t, or rather you can’t define or name something existing in this way, because it is beyond the capacity of our senses.

Senses need signals conveying limits in order to perceive objects and space, and mind needs those separate objects and the associated concepts to be able to think.

What is beyond our senses, even the senses extended through the finest imaginable machinery, has no form, no outlines and is beyond human imagination.

What is beyond imagination is beyond language. It is beyond what our mind can grasp. Beyond darkness and light. Neither visible nor invisible. But what, you may ask, can possibly be beyond my mind?

You are aware that you have a mind, right?

What is aware of your mind? Let’s call this next level that is aware of your mind your individual consciousness and know that the fact that you can observe your mind, tells you something about the nature of you.

It reveals that you, as individual consciousness, exist beyond mind. But are you not also, at this moment, aware of your individual consciousness watching your mind’s movements as you read this? Pause and check. What is it that is aware of your individual consciousness being aware of your mind? That is the next level.

Just as a country contains cities and a continent contains countries, a larger, only a larger consciousness can know your individual consciousness which knows mind. And you are knowing this, at this moment. You also know you are a drop of life, in life.

What can know all this?

Only an absolute or infinite consciousness can know mind, individual consciousness, as well as know communal consciousness and recognize life. You know all this. So, do you contain a sort of absolute consciousness?

Do we have pure impersonal absolute awareness in us?

I believe we do, or rather, we don’t have it, I believe it is what we ultimately are. I believe that is what everything is. I trust this. This trust is based on personal experience, not studied theory—but I will attempt to explain.

What would be the nature of pure and limitless consciousness/awareness? Can we observe it like we can observe our thoughts and mind? Here we reach a contradiction: Because pure and limitless consciousness/awareness is unbroken and whole, there is nothing for us to observe, no signals for the senses, no ideas for the mind. We can imagine that limitless consciousness can’t be aware of anything without becoming fragmented into object and subject, observer and thing, you and it. But we can neither analyse nor explain infinite consciousness with our finite human consciousness. Let’s instead begin by observing the world of object and subject.

Why does the perception of object and subject exist in this world? What is the space it exists in?

Let us say that in the “beginning” when only pure unbroken consciousness existed, there is no thing to be aware ofany thing. No object and no subject. It is even and whole. No difference exists in it. Having no parts, it is oneness. Having no movement, it is infinite stillness. Unmoving, it has no direction. It is pure awareness. It is indescribable. But it is.

Picture it as an infinite and placid lake.

Suddenly a circular pattern of change (ripples) spread across the surface. We see the ripples, but we do not know what caused them. We assume something was thrown in, because we only became aware of change after that “something” broke the surface and vanished. Let’s assume it was a pebble.

The lake does not become something else. It is still just water. And waves do not move forwards. Waves are up and down movement of water giving the illusion of forward movement.

For no reason, without any knowable cause and without anything really happening in the infinite field of pure consciousness, something appears to change. Maybe the “pebble” was something slowing down or speeding up. Maybe a contraction or expansion appeared to occur. Perhaps something gives the impression that it is becoming heavier or lighter, or denser or thinner, or darker or brighter, or clearer or dimmer. We can neither know, nor put into words what happened, because this universe—including time, space, matter, and our human intellect—appears “later” as a product of this indescribable primordial illusion of happening. Of change.

Picture the pebble as a tiny speck of minute differencethat seems to appear. It seems. This speck appearing out of full consciousness is also fully conscious. Like a wave it is not different from water. Perhaps this phantom-happening in the ocean of infinite consciousness is just infinite consciousness appearing to believe that a part of it is slightly dissimilar from itself. None the less, maybe because it is observed by consciousness, this speck now appears as a separate particle of limited consciousness suspended in infinite consciousness or oneness.

We, as humans with a human mind, we may come to the conclusion that it is a particle of illusory separateness existing in oneness, it is the deception of otherness.

Infinite consciousness or Oneness is now apparently split into object and subject, lake and pebble, pebble and ripples. Consciousness is now aware of the idea of otherness or difference. Imagination is born.

Where there was only one, there seems to be now two, one observing the other. In this way, identified observation fragments the passive stillness of pure expanded awareness. Observation is duality, it is the cause of why consciousness, through desire and aversion, becomes entangled in itself as the universe, and therefore your observation is also the key for disentanglement, liberation, and return to oneness—to wholeness.

Observation is our superpower. Identification with the observed is our weakness. How did we become like the man walking in his dome of perception through the fog of ignorance?

The attention-grabbing illusion of difference is the seed of the universe. Because infinite consciousness has the latent power of awareness it cannot help but observe this minute illusion of difference. The appearance of difference is so surprising that it pulls pure consciousness into denser and more and more painfully self-aware knots. This creates a build-up and causes a release of something like a wave.

This wave is known by awareness through observation. It is because of consciousness’ contracted identification with the illusory particle/knot of difference, that the observation of the outward movement of information/karma, or friction and release, is seen as a real effect.

This perception of cause and effect becomes the root of the universe and of bondage.

Perception again causes reaction and change, friction and release. A complex self-inferring resonance pattern arises. We call the pattern matter and space. Biological life arises out of it like a new wave. All matter and all life have their particular version of perceiving and reacting to their environment. Humans observe this phenomenon of friction and release through the experience of our mind and senses, through language (another wave) we call the patterns of movement: energy, heat, light, and matter. We see the patterns as a material universe separate from us, and we see ourselves as separate objects in a field of objects.

Why?

Because we believe we are individual and separate beings, we look out through our perception of being that and see only difference and isolation. Basically, we only perceive what we think we are. The paradox is that we are seeing what we are not. We think we see otherness because we think we are distinct. We believe we are separate.

We believe that we are sitting at the centre of the perceived world.

Alone. Trapped by thinking we are only the observer, not the observed.

But observation is also the tool for liberation.

Why?

Because of the Vision of Oneness. Observation from the point of view of unfragmented awareness/consciousness is the way to realise that infinite consciousness is the insubstantial substance of everything and nothing.

To the senses and mind (the separate particle of “me”) infinite consciousness (the placid lake) looks like it is nothingness. Because body, senses, and mind are restless, fragmented, reflective ripples in pure consciousness, only fragmented reflections in motion (ripples) are seen as real. We do not see the clear mirror. We are blind to the pure consciousness that we are.

So, what is the “problem”? Actually, the problem is that the problem is imagined.

In reality, with the “birth of the universe”, nothing happened. What appeared to happen was just a minute illusion of differentiation that dragged the awesome power of unlimited awareness in to observe itself. And then, awareness having now become aware of the individual point of difference, identifying with it, and becoming confused by it, ripples outwards looking for answers to the question: What Am I? How do I become whole again?

The need to investigate the apparent reality of separateness and the seeking of wholeness, creates the expanding manifestation of light, energy, and matter. This investigation, driven by the longing for truth, knowledge and oneness, eventually evolves into becoming the human mind and its specific combination of knowledge and ignorance. Limited consciousness (identification with otherness) is the seed of self-entanglement (illusion of the universe) and the seed of awakening (knowing all as one) rolled into one. Into the self-contradictory knot you call “me.”

How does this happen?

Keep in mind that in this writing consciousness/awareness is seen as an intrinsic and unbroken power dwelling in every space and every particle of the universe. Consciousness is there before the universe and is not yours. It is you. As humans we experience consciousness mainly in the awareness of impressions, thoughts, names, forms, emotions, and reactions—but we have the potential to see it shine through everything as one.

How?

Let’s go back to “before” humans, “before” the world.

The emerging illusory speck of separate consciousness thinks it has projected itself outwards to observe. In reality it sees only the effect or the reflection of itself, you could say it actually looks inwards, because it sees nothing but itself. This is an attempt of separate awareness to understand what happened to Oneness, what happened to the infinite universal consciousness as well as to gain an understanding of itself as separate, and to understand the illusion of the split. Due to limited self-knowledge, the illusory particle of individual consciousness simultaneously observes and generates what appears as the expanding sphere of investigative projection.

We have named this rippling projection: the universe. This phenomenon looks like light, objects, and movement.

You (the central particle of individual consciousness) look from within the apparently projected sphere of light, movement, and objects. Individual consciousness has a limited understanding. Outside this limit sits the infinite surrounding space of unbroken consciousness (the reflective fog).

This eternal unchanging space outside the sphere of rippling “reality”, provides a dark background of pure and still nothingness. A canvas for the dance of change. Or you could also say that when individual consciousness, through reflection, looks inward, the infinite still consciousness is lying as a dark central point of infinitely large empty space at the centre of its own projection (mind/world).

The centre appears outside and inside.

This infinite space (outer or inner) appears to the individual consciousness to be absolute stillness, blackness. Perceived from within the radiant bubble of mind, this dark background of “nothingness” functions as the black backing of a mirror, causing the projecting mind to reflect endlessly in its own dazzling light.

This tiny dazzling sphere of automatic self-reflection, this hall of mirrors, appears as this world of infinite maya (Sanskrit word for illusion). The surrounding/central space of infinite “nothingness” is ignored because we cannot name it with the tool of our limited consciousness, but we know from observation that without a still background, movement cannot be perceived, so we have an intuitive familiarity with the infinite and eternal part of ourselves.

Like that, this maya world can be seen as a continuous and dynamic projection of the light of separate central consciousness (mind), generated by the illusory observation of non-existent differences that mind imagines. Eternal blackness of pure still consciousness is the movie screen that the rippling light of illusion appears on.

This world exists, but it is only real when seen under certain conditions from a particular and limited central point of view. This point of view becomes the human being. It becomes you.

But why does this world happen?

Well, it does not happen, it is causeless; that is the very nature of an illusion.

That central point of illusory isolation, the point of split (which is nothing but an illusory ripple in infinite consciousness) reacts strongly to the impossible experience of existing as less than “all”, of appearing as a wave, as-if different from the whole.

This instinctive reaction to partial existence, to “untruth,” takes the form of an urgent need to be whole and true. This need starts an investigation of the new strange phenomenon of individual existence and isolation. The process of inquiry is the driving force of the expanding universe, and of evolution.

All life, including human beings, “appeared” as a result of the need of mind to understand the reality accidentally imagined by the mind. A need to reunite, to become whole, is the natural result of thinking you are cut off.

This phantom-image generated by mind reflected within itself is the sphere of limited clarity within the fog of ignorance. That sphere is the world. In it we get lost, restless, and homesick.

But all is not lost. This reflection of the illusion of mind is a potential tool for self-knowledge because it causes a reflection of mind unto itself; we can observe the mind with the mind.

That is meditation and self-inquiry.

Self-reflection is constant, it can be conscious and unconscious.

Imagine being a reflecting centre point. A reflecting fleck inside an inverted mirror ball. Imagine that this reflecting centre in its core contains infinite consciousness.

Because the core of universal consciousness had been forgotten, this continuous and unconscious self-reflection appears to be the “seeding” of pure consciousness into this world of matter. The spark of creation. But this spark is the first point of sudden isolation, of split, of ignorance of the whole. It is the seed of manifestation, multiplicity, and of confusion.

The Bible calls it original sin.

But, because the illusory manifestation is nothing but pure consciousness, even ignorance contains an inborn knowledge of freedom. This inborn knowing gives birth to a constant longing for liberation, and so, in order to overcome the confusion, the point of individual consciousness is by nature restless. It keeps slightly moving its position in the “hope” that it, through varying angles of reflection, will get a more complete view of itself, of “reality.”

Limited consciousness wants to become fully conscious by being full consciousness. It wants to understand and to become free. It spins around and looks in every mirror and sees every object. It is not yet aware that it is simply looking to see itself fully. This restless change of perspective, this shimmering, is the source of change and of time, and it gives the illusory impression that this process of unfolding and evolution has happened for billions of years; whereas, it is all happening now in this infinite moment “outside” the illusion of time.

This world is you, as consciousness, mistaking yourself to be not fully conscious, reaching for yourself to become yourself.

Our consciousness, in its attempt to be free, reaches up and out. This longing generates the impression of manifestation.

Pure consciousness, it now seems, sleeps in the rock, dreams in the plant, awakens in animal, thinks in man, and is liberated in the sage.

But nothing really happened, the silent, timeless, spaceless “space” that was there “before” the Big Bang complexity, is still here inside you. It is you. In meditation we know this space by abandoning struggle and limitation.

This pure unfragmented space of consciousness is the substance of everything, as well as the foundation of the illusion of fragmentation.

So why do we think we are an isolated central entity?

Seeing the surrounding projection of separate “self” reflects back the impression that individual existence is positioned as a separate central thing. The illusion is a perfect feedback loop.

This self-limiting version of self-awareness makes your self-reflection increasingly fragmented and complex, and so, as you project who you perceive yourself to be, in order to see yourself, the world changes too. Thus, complexity is perceived to arise as an infinity of self-reflecting spheres of matter, particles, atoms, molecules, stars, and planets. But this perception is deception because the central particle of individual consciousness is the seed of illusion.

The seed does not exist. The pebble was never thrown. The lakes is placid and still.

Still, as individual consciousness strives to be free of the limiting illusion of matter, life evolves as complexity in matter.

How to expand your awareness and become free?

For “limited” consciousness to become free of its projection of infinite resonance patterns (the world) it necessitates conscious inquiry into the nature of that reflection that we call reality. This is where the human being finally comes into the picture equipped with an extraordinary ability.

This ability is the amazing result of evolution driven by the need to understand.

This true superpower is the ability of detached observation.

A human being has the latent possibility of becoming aware that he has mistakenly believed himself to be separate and ignorant of the nature of the projection. Thus, the human being is offered an opportunity to understand the consequences of that limited angle of deceptive perception.

That is his gift. That is the gift of the universe.

You can arrive at an understanding that the outer world and your body/mind is a restless and wavering reflection. For you to truly know it, you, as individual consciousness, need to become completely still and reflect reality as it is. You need to become the placid lake.

You don’t need to renounce the world. There is nothing wrong with the image of the world, but you need to practice your power of seeing the world and yourself without judgment, aversion, or desire, without drawing conclusions, without identifying with the ripples.

Seeing the world as it is, turns it into your guide and friend.

You, like all creation, long to come home, to be free. You are driven by the inherent instinct that there is something important to understand, that a deeper knowledge exists. A knowledge which will let you know what you are. Which will free you and let you be One.

In humans, the ability to be aware of being aware, dawns at last. This eternal search for freedom, this eternal reaching of separate consciousness, this creator of maya, this longing for home that has reached upwards/outwards/inwards forever, sprouting all life, all levels of manifestation, is now, in a never stopping wish to know, reaching through you as you read these words written by that very same longing to know. To be free.

You, propelled by all life prior to you, are the forefront of individual consciousness attempting to know its true nature—which is infinite consciousness.

The veil is thinning. The fog is lifting.

In the human being we see the eruption of joy and ecstasy of being finally awake to the power of consciousness. This is exhilarating and intoxicating. And so, drunk by being awake at last, and by glimpsing that we are so close to finally knowing, we play, we investigate, analyse, create, invent, control, theorize, organize, build, and destroy….all this is an attempt, as old as the universe, to truly know this “reality” projected from our original illusory sense of separation and confusion.

We are looking for the way out.

But we are still, unbeknownst to ourselves, looking in one direction only. We are still looking in the direction we call outward.

In truth, we are looking inwards, into the increasingly complex and fragmented projection of beauty, love, philosophy, art, religion, consciousness, and truth. Our looking as an illusory separate entity is itself the illusory root of this amazing projection.

In Sanskrit the projection is called maya.

However, maya is the trap that can be the teacher.

Maya is literally Oneness shouting at us, demonstrating that multiplicity is an illusion, that maya is illusion. But mostly we don’t listen, instead we count, name, analyse, classify, copyright, monetize, and manipulate the maya projection for our individual materialistic advantage.

We are obsessed with the survival of this mortal vehicle, the body, and we forget to ask what it is that is alive in the vehicle. We feel the joy of being awake and want desperately to stay aware of being individual and conscious now, to enjoy this state of finally being able to investigate and fully enjoy the mind and its marvellous projection (maya), but we are simultaneously driven by an unconscious wish to become nothingness again. To break out of the inverted mirror ball spectacle.

To return to Oneness. To be free.

And in this quest to know what we are, we look at everything to see who we are. Observation and identification arise together and cloud our vision. Striving to become the true “self”, we try on numerous costumes in maya. We become an infinity of things. Always hoping that one day we will see our unchanging true face, we approach everything to find out if it resonates with our core “I.”

Our world becomes a reflection of our inner state. As long as we have not woken up to our true nature, we live in a world of our own personal sleepy illusion and we keep asking the illusion: ”Have you seen me?”

We are ignorant of that perfection and Oneness we carry as a tuning fork in our hearts, and that keeps telling us, as we pause to look for ourselves: “You are not this—not that.” And so, maya being a fragmented and ever-changing projection of illusion, will perpetually disappoint our search for something true and constant.

We, being truly all, cannot resonate with any fragment.

With time we realize that the unwavering bliss we seek is not found in the unstable objects and changing experiences of the projection.

By luck or by grace, we may get a glimpse of a larger freedom. The projection, now that we have tasted ultimate freedom, appears to be a blockage. A barrier. Then, after repeatedly hitting our head on the limitations of our reflected projection, we may get as lucky as to become disillusioned. Disillusion is a gift; it is the first step towards awakening. Dis-illusion. We stop seeing illusion as truth.

The world seen clearly, is your teacher.

Because we are no-longer bound blindly by identification to everything we see, we can now sometimes step back. We begin to properly observe the parts of the projection and find it to be much simpler than we thought.

We see it consisting of our mind, ego, world, senses, etc. We begin to see the patterns behind the phenomena. The blueprints. The simple code. We start to wonder what is real and what is not, what is changing and what is constant. What is truth and what is opinion. We wonder what in us is asking questions about reality.

When, through one pointed self-inquiry, we begin to question our ancient identification as an individual particle (body, mind, and ego) something marvellous happens; the projection of illusion, since its true source is pure truth and pure awareness, begins whispering to us.

Like blank paper or pure ink, it speaks without words, revealing what it really is, what you truly are.

This is true consciousness speaking as your teacher. You realize you are here to study consciousness and the nature of existence.

You are here because you, as nature, carries a wish as ancient as the universe, to be free of isolation, separation, limited existence, and ignorance.

A wish to know what you are.

If we are lucky, as we keep looking for our true face, a special person appears to guide us. He or she has been standing in front of you all your life, smiling patiently and waiting for you to finally see him.

When you meet him, your inner tuning fork will know this is it, perfect resonance, and you will stop searching. A door opens inwards. When later you recognize this teacher as yourself, a thousand doors open for you to walk through holding the hand of guru. This guide, who has transcended the projection by knowing it is a projection, has stopped believing he or she exists in a single point with a limited time-space horizon by realizing he exists as everything, everywhere, at all times.

That is why he knows that observing every little thing in one’s life, while being identified with body, will not bring any true answers, any full resonance. He knows that he is Oneness (like you) and has seen that the centre and the circumference are one.

This wise guide appears for us as if he stands outside the limited sphere of deceptive change, but in reality, he is inside you as well.

This “guide,” forever invisibly waiting inside your very centre, is now, because you are finally still enough to be able to listen, ready to raise his voice. To be seen. This voice is your true voice, it is the voice of free consciousness appearing as a person, but this person (just like you) is already pure being, has always been pure consciousness.

This voice tells itself (you): “Knowledge of what you are, is not gained through projecting your “mistake” outwards, multiplying it, and then separating, naming, and counting it. See instead the source of this play of light and dark. Turn your attention to the very centre of your heart, the centre of the projection, let awareness finally observe itself. Let consciousness at long last return home to where it came from. Know the nature of maya and of truth. This is the only way to liberation, and I have walked it, so listen to me, trust me. I am you talking to you. Begin to see!”

This pure unidentified observation, this straight and free beam of unhampered consciousness will annihilate the belief that the ever-spiralling projection of multiplicity is real. It will reveal that the confused tangle of maya is in fact truth wearing an illusory disguise.

What was until now seen as an impenetrable mystery, will unveil itself and be a portal to absolute knowledge telling us all the secrets of manifestation, of matter, energy, and consciousness.

The world is revealed to be a wordless scripture. You are the one who, with the support of all life, insentient and sentient, is catapulted into finally seeing. This ancient longing, this lonely singular driving force of all universes and all life, finally sees itself as Self, as Oneness.

You pop out. You are popped.

You see that the world is a tiny speck of illusion floating in the infinite ocean of consciousness. That the world is actually tiny, and that it is inside you and that your inner core of absolute consciousness is actually the portal to infinite consciousness, to Oneness.

By standing still, watching with no intention, creating no ripples, the bubble of thinking that reflection is real, annihilates itself.

The loop is closed. You are finally at home.

The loop never existed.

There is no journey, no traveller.

You never went anywhere.

You are eternal, infinite, immortal life itself.

You are the placid infinite lake.

Oneness never changed.

Kaare Troelsen-Vijay Shyam, April 2023

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