I
Resolving Our Personal Duality...1
Regarding object as subject is the state of mistaken identification in which we all live, commonly referred to as egoism or belief in our identity with the visible 'self'.
Ridding ourselves of this false identification by withdrawing subjectivity from the object and so reintegrating the subject, we are liable to find ourselves identified with the subject only in a manner which looks upon the object as a thing apart, as a concept that is not us.
This displaced and still partial identification leaves us tied down to the immediate duality of subject/object which inhibits our release.
Having rid ourselves of the false identification with the object, we then need to 'reabsorb' the object itself, so that object and subject re-become one.
II
The Process of Release
If I-dream subject infuse and re-absorb my object so that my object is reintegrated in me, I-dream subject, we thereby re-become one. At that moment we are I-Subject itself and All Objects that is relative Reality or the dual aspect of I-Reality (the Absolute, Pure Consciousness or Godhead) - which is Enlightenment.
'A perception ... that subject and object are one ... by this understanding will you awake to the truth of Zen,' i.e. Liberation. (Huang Po, Wan Ling Record, 26.)
III
Infusion
In what consists this process of 're-absorption' of the object?
Far from seeking to annihilate it as something extraneous to ourselves, the process may appear to us as one of infusion, which implies a taking possession of the object by flooding it with the relative reality of the I-subject (the 'Father' in the graceful terminology of Jesus).
As an image may we not compare this process to the introduction of a light into a dark room, which dissipates the darkness entirely and may be said to 'take possession' of that room? Since the object, being essentially 'void', may be described as being composed of 'darkness' - nothing then remains but light, which is the 'substance' of subject; and so they are one.
Light is an image, but karuna, caritas, impersonal love, is a description of the thing itself.
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Note 1: It is clear that the unification of object and subject cannot be effected by any action on the part of the subject of that object, but can only arise as a result of action from 'above', i.e. on the part of the I-subject which is itself that unification.
Let us not forget that the object, at the same time that it is the object of its subject, is also one of the objects of I-subject, which together constitute the totality of phenomena.
Note 2: The apparent complication of these attempts to envisage that which we are, may be compared to a draughtsman's efforts to represent on a plane-surface and by means of false perspective that which he sees in three dimensions.
What we are exists in what we can only envisage as multiple dimensions, and we have to represent it to ourselves in the three to which we are confined by our perceptions and the language in which we seek to describe them.
If we understand that, we are no longer surprised that something represented as in succession may be at the same time simultaneous in one or more of its aspects. For instance, the first and the last words of this note are separated on the two-dimensional plane-surface on which they are written, but the multidimensional aspect of this page may be represented by bending it over so that its corners meet: in the resulting dimension the first and the last words will appear together or simultaneously. Otherwise one can say that there is no reality in the conception of succession.
Thus no aspect of reality is really separated from any other: it is our attempt to envisage them that obliges us to represent them as separated in time and in space.
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