Outside the house a storm is developing, there are dark skies and it has become gloomy inside the room. I reach up and switch on the table light. The glow flashes into my mind like a shock-wave. Although the light appears just as it always does, my experience of it is completely different. It is penetratingly obvious that the glow is an effect of the primary power of electricity. Instantly, I am fascinated, excited. The bulb is a device; it is the electricity that is the power. This is obvious but I have never before seen it this clearly or this deeply. Of itself, the bulb is inert yet in the presence of the energy of electricity, a living reality is expressed that electricity by itself cannot perform. For light to shine as light, both elements need one another and isn’t it the same for perceiving and awareness, isn’t that what the Gita says about the Self, shining through the senses and doesn’t that mean that mind as mind is by itself inert and not I?
The body is a device and so is the mind. Suddenly this is vibrantly clear to me. It isn’t a new thought, I’m sure Ram has said it to me many times but this intuition this morning is different, this comes with a weight and density of recognition to it, like the ‘eureka!’ of the scientist, this is a shift of knowing, different from a belief; it is a conviction and the knowledge sings in me
Like electricity, awareness flows. In combination with the senses awareness feels, through the mind it knows, and through the intellect it thinks. Just like the bulb enables electricity to be light so mind enables consciousness to be thought. So when I experience mind, I experience consciousness as mind. When I feel my body, I know consciousness as skin. Just as electricity agitates and warms up the filament in the bulb, so consciousness reflects in mind and brings about all these beautiful phenomena. Not only is consciousness doing the thinking but thinking is consciousness. This is important. I realise I’m not viewing it as some intellectual point; I am seeing it as really happening in a way I haven’t before. Exhilarated, I gaze out of the window at the cloudy winter morning and remember with affection the sky analogy Ram had given in the Orangery last year; it was very beautiful and impacted upon me at the time. Now, in my chair, I hear the words afresh like listening to a recording re-playing in my head…
‘Sky is difficult to discern, Amelia, because when we look we see objects; perhaps blueness, or cloud, or light, or dark, sun, moon and weather, but we don’t see sky. There are many diverse conditions seen in sky yet you always know it is sky; you don’t need to think about it. Well awareness is like that. Just as sky has all things in it and flows as day or night, consciousness has all things in it and flows as skin, mood and thought. In the same way that sky is being the weather, so consciousness is being thought.’
A great peace comes upon me. The common tendency in me to think and analyse and question what I have just seen does not arise; it cannot arise because it has been defeated by powerful knowing. Truth is closer, not as an idea but as something present and happening, something real. This power to eliminate doubt through knowing seems very great. Is this elimination an aspect of enlightenment