# The Direct Experience  ## Metadata - Author: [[Alessandro Sanna]] - Full Title: The Direct Experience - Category: #books ## Highlights - On the contrary, the nothingness of physicists is the quantum vacuum, which is defined in positive terms, that is, with affirmative sentences: “the quantum vacuum is a field of probability…”. ([Location 307](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0C8FSNPSX&location=307)) - The immobile mover (unlike the concept of the modern Demiurge) does not cause the universe in time like the billiard cue causes the first ball to move and then crash into the other balls. The immobile mover is more like the pool table that supports the game (all the balls and their movements) before, during and after the game. ([Location 313](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0C8FSNPSX&location=313)) - deepen the concepts of Dharma, gratitude and compassion (whose etymology derives from: to suffer with). ([Location 363](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0C8FSNPSX&location=363)) - The wise speak us of a way of seeing things, a way of perceiving and relating to the world here and now. Classical thinkers called it virtue, while Eastern thinkers called it enlightenment. ([Location 371](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0C8FSNPSX&location=371)) - It is important here to underline the distinction that exists between mind and consciousness. The mind is the set of thoughts, perceptions, sensations, emotions, while consciousness is what the mind appears to. Each of us is her/his consciousness but not her/his mind. Consciousness is like the cinema screen on which the movie of the mind is projected. ([Location 434](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0C8FSNPSX&location=434)) - The conversion proposed in this book is to go from seeing consciousness as a manifestation of the physical world to seeing the physical world as manifestations of consciousness. ([Location 461](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0C8FSNPSX&location=461)) - The mind has an apparent physical location (between the eyes just below the forehead), but consciousness has not. ([Location 495](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0C8FSNPSX&location=495)) - The negative path is exemplified by the meditative tradition of mindfulness in which we observe the contents of our consciousness and place ourselves in the attitude of observers separated from these objects. Mindfulness is a dual meditation.   The positive path is exemplified by the meditative tradition of nididhyasana in which we observe the contents of consciousness as not separate from consciousness: as a manifestation of it. Nididhyasana is a non-dual meditation. ([Location 527](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0C8FSNPSX&location=527)) - All we know is therefore “nama-rupa”: names and forms. Concepts are always defined in relation to something else, they are symbols: in a dictionary each word/concept is defined in terms of other words/concepts, weaving and knotting a network where each node is connected to a set of other nodes that define it. Every concept is constituted or definable or reducible in terms of other concepts and/or other qualia. ([Location 595](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0C8FSNPSX&location=595)) - On the contrary, the qualia are distinguished, i.e. they explain their existence, by themselves, a property that scholastic philosophy called perseity: the qualia have their “being per se”. A qualia is therefore not like a car (which is a concept for the same reason that the table on which I write is, as we saw earlier) that has to be explained with other entities (components and factory). ([Location 645](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0C8FSNPSX&location=645)) - There is no escape: either something stands on its own (and we call it a qualia) or it leans on others different from itself (and we call it a concept): tertium non datur. ([Location 660](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0C8FSNPSX&location=660)) - In this light, the Hard Problem of Consciousness can be seen as a consequence of our clumsy attempts to reverse the ontological order, trying to ground qualities on concepts. ([Location 671](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0C8FSNPSX&location=671)) - But before this experience, evil is totally incomprehensible. What is a path to transfiguration? When you experience suffering, you fix constant, compassionate, non-judgmental and non-identification attention on it; after some undefined time its quality will begin to change. ([Location 710](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0C8FSNPSX&location=710)) - Physical entities have no inseity, but have their being (their existence) in consciousness. Consciousness is the substance of physical entities. In this sense, physical entities are manifestations of consciousness. ([Location 784](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0C8FSNPSX&location=784)) - Note: Templates engrams - The argument from quality shows how grafted realities can only be populated with “concepts” ultimately grounded in qualia, while qualia are, by definition, grounded in themselves. Metaphysically we can say that: since the contents of consciousness (the qualia) have no perseitas, consciousness has inseitas. Therefore, consciousness is a substance and has nothing more fundamental to refer to. ([Location 798](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0C8FSNPSX&location=798)) - There is consciousness, and its existence cannot be an illusion. The existence of consciousness is the most certain fact a person can ever have. We can doubt the existence of physical objects external to the mind, but we cannot doubt the existence of consciousness. ([Location 832](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0C8FSNPSX&location=832)) - Note: Godlike - Let’s try to give a concrete experiential example. Let’s imagine to be eating a mango and to savor its peculiar taste. This taste is like nothing found in the physical object mango. This happens analogously by comparing any qualia with any external physical object: there are no relationships of similarity. The “outside” has no trace of the mango flavor; maybe we would have chemical molecules specific to mango, but we will never identify the physical entity “mango flavor”. ([Location 856](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0C8FSNPSX&location=856)) - Now let's do a little experiment and examine any object, be it an idea, a physical object (like the book we have in our hands), a concept, an emotion, an idea about another idea or object, etc. …and let's ask ourselves two questions: where is it and what is it made of? If we pay attention we will notice that the answer to both questions is the same: the object is in our awareness and is made of our awareness. ([Location 867](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0C8FSNPSX&location=867)) - Therefore, life is but a traveling through oneself, like in a dream. ([Location 871](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0C8FSNPSX&location=871)) - Tags: [[pink]] - “the world is given to me only once, not one existing and one perceived. Subject and object are one”. This observation tells us that reality presents itself to us only once and not twice. It does not present itself to us for the first time as a reality perceived in the subject: hearing; and a second time as an existing reality out there, the object: the sound. I never experience a subject and additionally experience an object. I have only one subject-object experience: hearing-sound. ([Location 980](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0C8FSNPSX&location=980)) - Conversely, in your direct experience, when you know anything the triad collapses into a monad: subject, object and cognitive activity are a single indivisible substance. Check for yourself right now. Try, for example, hearing a sound. Realize that you are not at all able to separate between them: hearing (cognitive activity), sound (known object), and the awareness you have of the sound/hearing (the subject). At this point, and unlike what happens in a physical process, it appears that the subject-awareness in the act of knowing an object is not accessing a reality external to itself, because the object coincides with the subject, it is not separate. Therefore, by knowing an object, consciousness is knowing only itself, nothing distinct or external to itself. All reality is a manifestation of and in consciousness. Everything is consciousness. ([Location 1000](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0C8FSNPSX&location=1000)) - No physical entity has the ability to manifest, that is, to be, multiple distinct things. Every physical entity is just that one thing that it is at any given moment. ([Location 1040](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0C8FSNPSX&location=1040)) - No entity (thing, process, phenomenon, concept, etc...) has the property of being able to manifest itself in more than one single way, only awareness-being has this ability. Therefore a computer, a brain, or any physical system not having this ability, can never be aware. Rather a computer, a brain, or any physical system are manifestations of, in and as awareness-being. ([Location 1046](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0C8FSNPSX&location=1046)) - The reality we experience in the waking state is no different than that of the dream state: our avatar and physical surroundings exist within our consciousness. Everything we perceive has a profound unity. ([Location 1049](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0C8FSNPSX&location=1049)) - Physics is the study of the structure of consciousness. The substance of the world is mental. Sir Arthur Eddington ([Location 1054](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0C8FSNPSX&location=1054)) - This is the real secret of life: to be fully involved in what you are doing here and now. And instead of calling it work, realize it’s a game. Alan Watts ([Location 1111](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0C8FSNPSX&location=1111)) - This is because whatever we can experience, whether it is a concrete thing (the first neti) or conceptually describable (the second neti), cannot be who we we really are, the consciousness, since while we experience it there is always at the same time a subject who bears witness to these things. ([Location 1118](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0C8FSNPSX&location=1118)) - The famous Indian Buddhist philosopher Nagarjuna said: “Everything is clear to those for whom non-substantiality is clear. Nothing is clear to those for whom non- substantiality is not clear”. ([Location 1209](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0C8FSNPSX&location=1209)) - Therefore the conclusion on the relationship between content and container is as follows. A physical object is like a container, in which by removing the contents, the container itself also disappears. Consciousness, on the other hand, is like a container in which removing the content does not make the container disappear. ([Location 1216](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0C8FSNPSX&location=1216)) - Every physical phenomenon is a type of process subject to increasing entropy.   Now let’s look at any object that we have before our eyes, for example an apple. Let’s start by pronouncing its name: “apple”. After that we make sure that no more words, and therefore no concepts, appear. No concept of apples, fruits, greengrocer, etc... We look at the apple without conceptualizing anything. We then slowly shift our attention from the apple to the sense of being aware of the apple. Finally we shift attention from the sense of being aware of the apple to the sense of just being aware. To do this, we can try to arouse the sensation of wanting to look at the (imaginary) point from which we look at the apple. Obviously we won’t find such a point, but we will get the effect of immersing ourselves more and more in the awareness of awareness. We stay there for at least a minute and then we resurface. As we resurface we notice that in this experience we have not perceived any change, no variation of anything, that time has seemed absent. Finally we note that this awareness, seen from the perspective of the mind, has been the same since we were born, that it has never changed, that I am always me, and I never stop being me.   If the reader has done this experiment correctly, it will immediately be clear that the law of entropy does not hold for consciousness. By repeating this experiment several times, you will notice that each time the experience remains the same. Awareness always remains identical to itself, our deepest sense of identity remains unchanged: there is no increase in entropy. This implies that consciousness is made up of a single element (like a single coin): consciousness cannot be broken down into parts. Therefore consciousness transcends the realm of physical phenomena. ([Location 1276](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0C8FSNPSX&location=1276)) - Everything can be the object of knowledge by the consciousness, except the ultimate subject: itself. Therefore consciousness, as the ultimate subject, is nothing that can be known objectively. Consciousness is separate from all that is not itself, the ultimate subject. ([Location 1564](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0C8FSNPSX&location=1564)) - The main equation of non-duality is that “all is one”. This equation is often read in a single direction: from “all to one”. This verse exemplifies the negative path, neti-neti. We forget that the equation can and must also be read in the other direction: “one is all”. This direction exemplifies the positive path. ([Location 1813](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0C8FSNPSX&location=1813)) - The key point is to realize that both what we call a first person perspective and a third person perspective are BOTH within consciousness. The first person is inside the mind and inside consciousness. The third person is outside the mind but inside consciousness. Therefore from the point of view of consciousness (as opposed to that of the mind) there is no difference between the first and the third person perspective. Consciousness is beyond perspectives. All perspectives are within consciousness.   Therefore, it is epistemologically correct to analyze consciousness from the point of view of consciousness: because it is the same point of view with which in science we analyze physical phenomena in the third person. ([Location 1931](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0C8FSNPSX&location=1931)) - This is the condition described by the theses of postmodernism: there is no absolute point of reference, everything is convention, everything is opinion. ([Location 2003](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0C8FSNPSX&location=2003)) - A second consequence of the fact that consciousness has no characteristics and attributes is that between my consciousness and yours there is no distinguishing feature or aspect. There must then be a single consciousness that “expresses” itself in a multiple number of people, human and otherwise. What is the love and compassion one feels for another person? It is the intuition that deep down we are the same consciousness: that there is unity between us.   A third consequence of the fact that consciousness has no characteristics and attributes is that it cannot be modified or changed by the contents of experience. Whatever comedy or tragedy appears as a film on the cinema screen, it does not change the cinema screen. In fact I feel that I am the same consciousness as when I was 4 years old. What I experience and my personality varies throughout life, but my consciousness always remains the same.   The experiential, not only intellectual, discovery of the non-identity of the self with the body-mind is at the basis of the Eastern idea for achieving inner peace. There is a beautiful passage from the Ashtavakra Gita, one of the oldest and most emblematic texts of Advaita Vedanta, which expresses this idea very clearly and directly: “If you detach yourself from identification with the body-mind and remain relaxed in Impersonal Consciousness and as an Impersonal Consciousness, at this very moment you will be happy, at peace, free from bondage”.   The non-dual experience, or nirvana or samadi or moksha, or whatever name you want to call it according to tradition, does not eliminate joys and pains. Joys and pains will always be there, what is transcended is suffering, understood as meta-pain: the psychological pain of having pain. And this happens because we stop identifying the Self, the true I, the consciousness, what we are, with the body, the mind, the ego, the personal history. It is not difficult to realize that the person, the ego, will always have problems to deal with. It is useless to delude ourselves that this is not the case, or that in the near or distant future it could be otherwise. On the contrary, our real Self, awareness, always remains untouched by the film projected on its screen, and is therefore happy and at peace within itself. ([Location 2085](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0C8FSNPSX&location=2085)) - In fluid mechanics there are two different approaches to describe a flow and consequently to write the equations that model it. In the so-called Lagrangian approach we ideally straddle a fluid particle and follow it along the current. In the Eulerian approach we stand on the bridge over the river and observe the whole river flowing. The Lagrangian approach is the common one when we are not in meditation, we perceive ourselves as an individual separate from the rest of the other individuals and entities with our own goals and preferences. The Eulerian approach is what we acquire during meditation or with the neti-neti. We perceive ourselves as witnesses of the whole flow of life, including our person.   The Eulerian and Lagrangian approaches are not superior to each other, but they are complementary. In fact, each provides a point of view and a perspective that the other is unable to provide. Now, however, what happens if we descend from Euler’s bridge and try to put ourselves in the perspective of the river bed to perceive the entire river? This is what happens when, once the witness perspective of experiences has been established, we move forward in the investigation of experience, moving towards non-dual experience. ([Location 2112](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0C8FSNPSX&location=2112)) - We have often wondered why mathematics is so capable of describing nature. The dilemma is that it has always been understood that mathematics is clearly a mental construction, while nature is a material system. How can something mental describe so well something that is not mental? In light of all that has been established in this book, this dilemma evaporates, it is transcended. Now we can say that mathematics has this ability due to the fact that both mathematics and physical nature are both immaterial in nature. ([Location 2186](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0C8FSNPSX&location=2186)) - Don’t fall into what I call the metal detector fallacy. The great success of metal detectors in detecting metals is not proof that there are only metal objects. Thus, the great success of reason is not proof that there are only things manageable by reason. ([Location 2201](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0C8FSNPSX&location=2201)) - The mind-matter dualism was a bogus problem, mathematicians would say it was an “ill posed problem”. In the sense that it was due to the fact of having assumed, perhaps without realizing it, wrong starting hypotheses without justification.   Mind and matter are both manifestations of a single substance: consciousness.   The extraordinary ability of mathematics (a purely mental construction) to describe the physical world derives from the fact that there is no duality between mind and matter. ([Location 2222](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0C8FSNPSX&location=2222)) - Matter, the physical world, is then just an aspect of a wider qualitative reality. Therefore matter is an expression of qualities, of which the mathematical ones are only a subset. The Romantic poets were right when they taught us to see the meaning behind any aspect of the physical world. ([Location 2232](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0C8FSNPSX&location=2232)) - There are all the indications to believe that the number of possible qualia is indefinite and inexhaustible. A mystery is not something that one cannot know, but it is something that one will never stop knowing. In this sense, consciousness is the greatest mystery. Consciousness is an inextinguishable source of meanings. There is no end to the endless road. There will always be something new to discover. It is up to each of us to live to let this source express/manifest itself. ([Location 2316](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0C8FSNPSX&location=2316)) - The seed that I believe this book may have transmitted is that of: Questioning the false assumptions we have about the nature of reality. Investigate on your own, without relying on abstract theories, but using our direct experience. And that this investigation is feasible and fruitful. Understanding that mind and awareness are two distinct things, and that not recognizing this fact leads to totally confusing the nature of reality. That reality is qualitative, and therefore it is wrong to interpret everything in a reductionist way. That reality is a manifestation of awareness. That the non-dual understanding of reality is a stimulating and meaningful vision that does justice to our deep intuition that reality must make sense. ([Location 2332](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0C8FSNPSX&location=2332)) ## New highlights added April 7, 2024 at 12:32 PM - We are like waves in the ocean, longing to return to the ocean that we never left. A wave experiences itself as separate from the ocean and, from that place of primal misidentification, begins to seek the ocean, in a million different ways. It is seeking itself and doesn’t realize it. Its longing for home is its longing for itself. This is the human condition. Jeff Foster ([Location 2406](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0C8FSNPSX&location=2406))