Wei Wu Wei: What am I? (WLL68)

two : Great news, old chap, the greatest ever.

one : Excellent. That is to say ?

two : I am reality!

one : As obvious as your nose, but congratulations on noticing it.

two : But it is terrific! I had no idea life held such a thrill! I want to dance, or jump over the moon. I feel as if a fog had lifted, as though an insupportable burden had been taken from my shoulders.

one : The I-concept is like being gagged, and bound with chains, is it not ?

two : Yes, indeed. I had long believed the thing did not exist, but now I have come to know it. What a difference !

one: ‘Believing’ it was only the usual pretence; knowing it is still intellectual; when you experience it even gravity will no longer exist.

two : When I look, when I speak, when I listen, it is reality that looks and speaks and listens!

one : Who else could there be to look and speak and listen ?

two: No one, but I didn’t realise it. And what l see, what I say, what I hear—is reality !

one : Nonsense; it is nothing of the kind!

two: What do you mean? What is it then?

one: What you see, say or hear is only an interpretation of reality in a dualistic medium, and bears no recognisable resemblance to reality except in its suchness which can neither be seen, said nor heard.

two : And yet the ‘I’ that sees, speaks, listens, is reality? It seems illogical.

one: Reality knows nothing of logic; it has never been to school.

two: Even so . . . But of course you must be right; come to think of it, what I see, say and hear could not be really real, could it?

one : It could not. What you see, say and hear consists of objects in consciousness, interpretations of reality in a context of time, space and duality.

two: Yes, yes, but why?

one: Because, of course, reality being outside time, without space, and non-dual—all of which are concepts only—cannot be perceived as it is via those limitations.

two: Then how can I really be perceived?

one : You cannot—unless as an algebraic symbol, or, perhaps, as relation, as harmony for instance; you are normally seen as an object in consciousness, dualistically in time, and spatially as form.

two : My reality, my suchness, can only be inferred?

one : The inference is inescapable, but your suchness is imperceptible.

two : How, then, do I become perceptible?

one: By being clothed; you yourself are invisible, only your clothes are seen.

two : My clothes? What clothes, and where do they come from?

one : Your clothes are qualities, projected on to you by dualistic thinking.

two : What kind of qualities?

one: All kinds—size, weight, shape, colour, character . . .

two : But those are all estimations, functions of their opposites, points on a scale of imaginary values, limited by the range of our senses, devoid of intrinsic reality !

one : You see that clearly; you have been reading the Diamond Sutra—‘Thus have I heard . . .’

two: And stripped of these arbitrary and unreal dualistic estimations, what am I?

one : A hole in space.

two: Like everything else?

one: Like everything else sensorially perceptible. Like the whole universe as perceived by our senses and their mechanical extensions.

two: The suchness of no object can ever be perceived ?

one: Obviously not.

two : But what are objects, when all is said and done?

one: Objectivisations of reality in the only way reality can be objectivised, that is, by the dualistic approach, comprising consciousness and objects thereof—all of which we are.

two : And consciousness includes all objects?

one: Everything that is cognisable. Nothing is outside consciousness, for there is no outside of that.

two: As subject, I am always real; as object, I am always relative?

one: Relativity meaning reality envisaged dualistically as Observer and observed.

two: Suddenly it seems simple!

one: Complications only arise in false problems.

two: How is it possible to identify oneself with an object, when one knows oneself as the subject?

one: It is not possiblel You have been identifying yourself with an object instead of recognising yourself as being also the subject, that is all.

two : And yet I was eternally saying ‘I,’ like everybody else!

one: That ‘I’ was an object, never the real subject when you used it conditionally, that is the reason.

two: So that is it; when one understands, realises, knows that one is I-reality . . . it becomes obvious !

one: As obvious as a nose !