Do you not notice that your mind and body is all you can ever experience, and not further than that? Even the “body” cannot be directly experienced except for the sensations which can be felt. The shape, form, and color of your “body” can only be seen by your eyes, hence perceived by your mind. Seeing and tasting are different senses altogether. The same goes for hearing, smelling or touching. From these bodily senses, mind or consciousness takes effect – which is what you are experiencing.
Anything further than these mindbody experiences is a mere construct, a fabrication of the mind/consciousness. Unbelievable? Surprised or shocked? Do you not notice this ordinary, yet simple truth that has always been such?
Take for instance, food. The food you eat can only be experienced as sour, sweet, bitter, salty or savoury – all through the tongue, which is a part of your body. But the tongue on its own cannot taste; taste is experienced by the mind. Thus, you can only experience what the body is able to sense, not the food itself. Whereas the kind of food that can be seen by your eyes arises through another bodily sense altogether, not through the tongue which is only for tasting. But the eye itself cannot see. It takes consciousness to see, hence it is called “seeing consciousness”. In other words, your experience of what you see ‘out there’ is actually nothing more than the mind’s perception or interpretation of experiences. You can’t really experience the world except through your mindbody’s experience of the world. Even quantum physicists are now debating whether there is even anything outside of consciousness, or mind – but that is not where I wish to delve into right now.
It is as if you are always one moment late in every sense – the mind experience first, only then you come next into experiencing what the mind experienced, never before the mind. More than that, you can never experience the world directly, except what the mind tells.
So what’s the big deal? Big indeed, if you come to realise deeply this simple fundamental truth. You just can’t take your life for granted anymore. Not in the sense of what or who you are but what can be experienced moment to moment is all happening within you realtime in your own shell of your mind – you are experiencing the mind, not the world. Think about this – when you judged someone, you are experiencing the entire thinking mind, not what is on the person. When you don’t like someone, come to realise that “that someone” is actually your own mind thinking, with “anger” as another mind experience, all within the consciousness of the mind. That’s what you are, every moment, when any experience comes up.
So who or what are “you” really? Do you not notice the mind can know “you” since “knowing” is one special function of the mind. Notice that when you have in mind “I know who am I”, it is actually a thinking mind? Either thinking about your past or the body. In short, the mind is like a big dream, where “you” is another fabrication within it. Be baffled!
And if you are not interested in investigating this, or have totally forgotten about this simple reality, your interaction with the world becomes real, as in any dream state, until you finally awaken from it.