Nome dialogues

Photo: Rhodopsin, the protein behind vision.

From the book Self-Knowledge:
"If you are aware of the fact that you can have profound spiritual experience and if you are aware of the fact that you can realize, you will tend to be more concentrated. If you consider how much wandering you have done and all the "good" it has done for you---how many hours, days, weeks, and years are spent with a wandering mind? "Must we go on like this?" So should one address the mind.
Q: I am the one who is wandering, so I should stop it.
N: Yes. No one else is causing you to wander.
Q: It is becoming clearer.
N: Direct your mind in an intelligent fashion. The person who is caught up in day-dreaming to the extent that there is no noticing that there is day-dreaming is not about to stop day dreaming. When a person realizes that he has been day-dreaming, at that moment, there is the opportunity to meditate more deeply. Similarly, when one recognizes ignorance as ignorance, he can step beyond it. When one sees an illusion as an illusion he can realize Truth beyond it. When one sees this is suffering and that one need not be suffering, he can proceed toward Bliss. When you see that this is agitation and that there is a state of peace, and that you should proceed in the direction of peace, you can do so. That is the beginning of discrimination.
Let us address this idea of being behind the eyelids. When thought ceases, it is not your eyeball that knows such. Your eyeball is not that which knows your thoughts. If your eyeballs were removed somehow by some surgical procedure and placed on a table in front of you, they would not know your thoughts.
Q: It is not the thing that is seeing.
N: Yes. The senses do not perceive, or know, thought. Thought is something far subtler than sensory perception. You see forms and colors. You hear sounds. You touch sensations. You smell fragrances and odors. You taste various tastes. You do not, though, smell, taste, see, touch, or hear thought. You do not have sensory perception of thought. You have thoughts about sensory perceptions. A person who is inquiring deeply will see that he has thoughts about perceptions, that perceptions do not seize thought, yet thought seizes upon perceptions, and that the perceptions are nothing but thought. They are a kind of thought, a mode of mind, seemingly more solid.
All the perceptions are in the mind, just like in a dream. We seem to have dream thoughts, and we also have our dream perceptions, but really they are all dream thoughts. It just seems as if some are inside the mind of the dream character and some things are outside the dream character, but they are all dream thoughts.

It is very much like that in the waking state. It is just a play of one's mind. Certainly, that play of the mind and its subsidence are not seen by the senses. Something else sees it. That which sees it is the Witness. It is not something you do, but rather it is something which shines, or knows, continuously. It is called "light", but it is not a light that you would physically see. Just as light, such as sunlight or lamp light, enables you to see anything, in the same way the Witness enables you to have the experience of any kind of thought, including those thoughts that are called sense perceptions. If you inquire, as to who is this Witness, and what is its nature, you see pure Consciousness. "Seeing" is knowing. Know Consciousness as it is.
Q: In Consciousness, does one still realize that his eyes are closed and he is not thinking? Is that sensation still there? Is the awareness aware that I am sitting there and that I am a person who is doing this?
N: When your eyes are closed, you know about that. There is the thought that your eyes are closed. Something knows that thought, and it is without thought. It is without eyes. Said to be all-seeing, it has no eyes. It cannot be seen by the eyes. Said to be all-knowing, it cannot be known by thought.
Q: Will that thought, "My eyes are closed and I am looking", melt away in Consciousness? Will I not be conscious that my eyes are closed in meditation?
N: You will be conscious of the fact that there are no such things as eyes, whether open or closed.
Q: Oh!
N: We do not enter a state in which we are unaware. Rather, it is of the nature of transcendent Consciousness. It is not that we are unaware of the world. We are aware that there is no world. It is that not that we are unaware of the senses. We are aware that there are no senses. It is not that we are unaware of thought. We are aware that thought has no existence.
If you are perplexed as to how you can reach it, inquire. Are you really located in the eyes, or behind the eyes? Or is the sensation of the eyes still something known by you, something objective to you? If it is known by you, if it is objective to you, who is that "you"? It cannot be the eyes. You can apply the same for all the senses. For certain, you are not behind the eyes or in the eyes. The eyes are merely fleshy matter. Who you are is not matter. The eyes do not perceive themselves.

There is a verse, which originally appeared in a fragmented manner in the Upanishads. It was put together by Adi Shankara and appeared later, recast again, by the Maharshi in the supplement to Reality in Forty Verses, also known as Truth Revealed. It is written as a dialogue between a disciple and a guru. It starts with the question "What is the light?" The verses traces what it is that is knowing. The dialogue proceeds in terms of light. What is the Light for you? It starts with the outermost perception, proceeds to the eyes, to the mind, to the "I", and to the Realization that one's real nature is Consciousness. Look at that verse and meditate on it's meaning.