Mark: I’ve heard you mention past lives before. So what is really a past life and why does it matter?
iRealization: What exactly do you mean by past life?
Mark: In my mind what is meant by that is somehow the baggage, the reactions and the memories that are not only exclusive to this bodymind.
iRealization: What we mean by life is an individual life. A person is born and a person dies. That’s what you mean by life, normally.
Mark: Yeah.
iRealization: So, first of all, is that happening? Is there an individual that is born?
Mark: Only as a recollection.
iRealization: Let me ask the question one more time. Is somebody born?
Mark: I don’t know what you mean by “somebody”.
iRealization: Were you born?
Mark: *laughs* Depends on what I understand to be me. Sometimes I would say yes, other times I would say no.
iRealization: Let me ask the question again. Were you born?
Mark: My answer now is no.
iRealization: That’s all. That’s the end. So where’s the question of reliving and all that stuff people talk about?
Mark: Yeah, that was my question. Why is it useful to talk about?
iRealization: It’s not useful. It’s called ignorance. Everything is ignorance only. There would be no more questions that could occur because the question is itself born from ignorance of the fact that itself is not an actual thing. The knower is itself the known. It’s pure imagination that plays at all times. It’s only conceptualization. Constantly imagining it is this, it is that, it is such and so.
So to answer your question about rebirth and all these things, first you have to become extremely clear what it is. For there to be reliving, rebirth and all that, there has to be birth. For there to be rebirth, there has to be a birth, no?
Mark: So what is the use? I’ve heard you say to someone that one might not wake in this lifetime.
iRealization: Well, that’s because you have to become clear as to the urgency of the situation. This illusory nonsense will continue for eternity… unless it ends. It’s not actually happening. It’s like a dream ending – it does not end for anybody, it just never actually happened – but it is being experienced in consciousness only. Consciousness is appearing and vanishing, appearing and vanishing, as you can tell in dreaming, waking and all that.
Consciousness is not there, so to speak, operating in the dream state. So this constant appearance and disappearance of consciousness is what you call the appearance and disappearance of suffering. Could there be suffering without consciousness?
Mark: Wow. Yeah, no.
iRealization: Without consciousness, what is there? You come back from sleep and say “Oh! I was very peaceful!” Everybody loves to go to sleep. Who doesn’t like to sleep?
Mark: Yes. It’s just the cognition part or the awarenessing part.
iRealization: Exactly. Once you become aware of what it is, which is Awareness, your question of “Who becomes aware?” is a foolish one. The “who” is itself an illusion! There is no individual anywhere. There never was. Nobody was born, nobody can die. It’s just Awareness within which all this is seemingly happening but it’s not actually happening, you see?
Mark: To me when you say that “it’s not happening” is because everything that is allegedly happening doesn’t have any meaning, like…
iRealization: When you say “something is happening”, there has to be a concrete happening; an actual event.
Mark: Exactly, yes.
iRealization: Now, for there to be an actual event there has to be somebody to whom that happening happened to. Without somebody being there for that something to happen, that event cannot be cognized as an happening. For there to be cognition of it, there has to be somebody cognizing it. Somebody means previous knowledge based on which it is cognized. Cognition is recognition; it is a play of knowledge, it is a play of consciousness. Knowledge is appearing and disappearing – which is illusion only – like a shadow. Does the shadow appear and disappear? When was the shadow born, when did it die?
Mark: Yeah… That’s it.
iRealization: So, immortality is not found by somebody. Eternity is immortal. Something that is eternal is what you mean by immortal – it cannot die. Why can it not die? There’s only one possible reason for something that cannot die. Because everything dies, you see? So the only way for something to not die is what?
To never have been born.
Mark: Oh yeah, to never appear.
iRealization: Not to never appear. See, to never appear, means that it always there. You see? Ever present.
Mark: In my mind, if something can appear, it can disappear.
iRealization: Ah. But something that never appears is always there, you see? Because it is always not there. It is present by its absence.
Mark: Yeah, exactly. Got that.
iRealization: So it’s present, very much present through its absolute absence. So it is the absolute presence which is felt and known through its absolute absence as an object. Once this becomes clear without any knowledge, there is only the remaining factor which is the actual thing, which is the Knowing. And any knowledge comes and goes from that only. You know everything is happening in Intelligence – you are driving, suddenly the body does whatever it needs to do to steer the car. You don’t need to remember the instructions. Intelligent action occurs there.
So, Intelligence is the actual doer. It is evident. There’s why there’s this desire for intelligence. Everyone praises intelligence, there’s intelligence agencies… all that.
Artwork - Courtesy of Shubham Dhage
