This consciousness exists as each being, and nothing else exists.
- The instruction: carry this not as theory but as a lived style of perception — move through the world behaving as if everything is conscious. In the beginning, ‘as if’; if you persist in the foolishness, objects vanish and persons appear everywhere; the whole world illumines.
- Three layers in every being: surface = matter (appears solid; science has already dissolved it into energy); middle = vital energy/prana; deepest = witnessing consciousness. Your own ‘neti, neti’ inquiry reaches this: eliminate body, eliminate mind, and what cannot be eliminated — the witnessing — is what you are. That same witnessing-consciousness is the deepest layer in every rock, tree, and door.
- Lin Chi’s door: a student vented anger on a door and shoes; Lin Chi required him to ask their forgiveness and would not admit him until the door ‘forgave.’ As the man persisted, he began to feel warm, forgot the onlookers, felt the door and shoes change mood — and felt them forgive. This became his awakening: everything is condensed consciousness. If you cannot feel it you are blind; nothing is wrong with the things.
- The pitfall — leaving it as belief. Intellectual assent produces nothing; only acting it out — touching a tree with the sensitivity you would bring to a person, asking forgiveness from a door you slammed — turns the idea into perception.