“Consciousness is not produced by your body or your brain; it is the simple feeling of life.”From El refugio del corazón
I was six years old and in first grade. One cold, rainy day in Bogotá, the teacher explained to us with great conviction that the brain was the organ that produced life in the body. I, in the midst of my innocence, was left with a question: how could a simple piece of meat produce life?
That night I sat on the living room sofa, crossed my legs and set out to search for life inside me. I wanted to touch it, grasp it, understand it with my attention and my reason. The harder I tried, the more it slipped away from me. Nothing could be felt physically, and yet there it was: here. It was not an object or something I could catch.
After a while I gave up. I simply relaxed, closed my eyes and let myself be carried by that feeling, without chasing it. And then something deep opened in me naturally: I lost all notion of my own body and was beyond my senses and my perception.
I wanted to talk about it, but there were no words for it. When I told my father what had happened to me, he warned me not to do it again, because it was dangerous, and I stopped investigating. Adults never really understand the real fictions of children. Even so, it would mark my existence forever: it was the first of the experiences through which life has been leading me.
Where is the feeling of life born?
I invite you to ask yourself the same question that boy asked. Where do you think the feeling of life originates? How do you become aware that you exist? What lets you know? Is it in your brain, in your senses?
Or perhaps it is the other way around: could it be that life is generating your brain so that you can have this experience?
We have reduced our feeling of life to a chemical function of the brain. Most people feel trapped in their own heads, because that is where they feel the brightness of their lucidity, and they believe everything happens there. But the brain is just one part of the body that interprets experience, as if we were wearing the headset of a virtual reality game. The senses are portals for the psyche to perceive energy.
And yet, you are the one who notices that this is happening. You are the one who becomes conscious of that energy in the head that receives and processes information. Stop for a moment and realize that you would go on existing without that experience. It is the experience that cannot exist without you.
A silent present
Do a small experiment with me. Try to think of something that has neither name nor form. Is it possible?
When we try, the mind most likely goes blank. There is no answer. All that remains is the present, here and now, perceived as pure silence. This silent present is our silent presence.
Imagine you could stretch that instant out a little longer. What can you perceive about yourself in the absence of thoughts?
Unquestionably, you go on existing. There is no thought formed about your existence: it simply is. How do you know? Because you are conscious of it.
That consciousness is not a soul in the form of a ghost hidden inside the body, nothing like that. It does not originate in the mind, or in any part of the psyche. It is the basis of existence, and it comes before any thought, emotion or sensation. Before anything appears on the threshold of the mind, consciousness has to be there to notice it.
If you were born without senses
Let me ask you a very simple question: if you were born without senses, without thoughts, without feelings and without any knowledge, what would you have a relationship with?
With Consciousness, which is your primordial essence: the substratum and fundamental basis of what you are.
Then, as we grow up, we begin to relate to ideas and concepts forged in us by the senses and by our ways of thinking and feeling. All of these are relationships with what is outside, and that is where our conflicts as human beings begin: veils gradually form that cloud reality and make us believe the truth is outside of us. But there is no need to go anywhere to look for it. It is very close to you. Relate to life, to yourself, to that which goes on being in the absence of all your senses.
The five faces of life
That primordial feeling of life is no different from love, peace, fullness, harmony and happiness. These are not mere experiences we can attribute to our Being: they are the five faces of life itself. Where there is peace there is happiness, where there is happiness there is love, and where there is love there is Divinity.
That is why, when you close your eyes and simply feel that you are alive, without adding anything to it, you are in that presence where there is no mind or emotion, only the essence of life manifested in you. There is only fullness there, and a single feeling of deep happiness, and you feel truly loved by Divinity. Consciousness is divine in essence; it is always present behind any experience of the psyche, and it always recognizes itself through the feeling of life.
What our programming made us forget
From childhood we are taught to disconnect from this truth. We are programmed to look outside for what was always inside, and so our presence goes completely unnoticed. The senses draw us outward, the mind puts a name on everything, and we forget who we really are: the spiritual presence that allows us to have the primordial knowledge that we exist.
We wanted to explain life through what is organic and evolutionary, we attributed all of it to the physical body, and that is also how the idea of death was born. That is where the greatest ignorance was born: with an idea, we killed what is truly immortal.
But what you are remains intact. Here and now there is a part of you that is always free, indivisible, that goes beyond the body and the mind and transcends all the senses. No matter what limitation you have, you already have a luminous and divine aspect. How could we create divinity, if divinity is already divine? How could we add anything to what is already perfect?
Remember
Remember that you are alive because you are conscious of it. No matter what happens to your body or your mind, the primordial feeling of life remains the same. It is unchanging. Every time you choose to be present, free of identification with the thoughts that pass by, a door opens in you toward the new and the magical.
That boy who gave up on the living room sofa did not find life in any part of his body. Something opened in him when he stopped chasing it and simply relaxed into it. That same path is open to you, today, in this instant as you read these words.
From Dr. Zuluan Orion's books: El refugio del corazón · Deshojando el Corazón de la Eternidad · Devoción