NOEMAYA

I speak to you, my comrade, of a state that’s veiled to you from time immemorial; but I must speak carefully or else my words can veil you even further, and that’s not due to the influence of the words but of how you are conditioned to receive and comprehend them. Before I proceed, I wish to enumerate and make distinct the various types of veiling as encountered in the phenomenal world. 

There are two general types of veilings with respect to the location of the veil: one in which the veil is outside of you, and the other in which the veil is within you. An example of the former is when there’s a curtain between you and an object, so your perception is obstructed by an entity outside of you. In this case, the unveiling is done by the removal of the outside veil. In the latter case, the object of perception is veiled due to an inner obstruction, so that there’s nothing in between you and the object of perception but rather something within you that keeps you from perceiving it. 

The inner veils can themselves be divided further into three types: in the first category lie all cases in which the instruments of perception are at fault or not functioning at all; for example in the case of a person who has lost their sight and to whom the world is veiled due to that fault.

The second category of inner veils belongs to the natural limits of the instruments of perception: in the case of the visual perception, the eye can only see so far and at a certain distance distinctions begin to fade so that one may fail to see beyond that; also, the eye may fail to discern an object that is blended with the background.  

But there’s another type of veiling in which an object that is directly in front of one’s eye and within the functioning limits is not seen; that’s when one’s attention is elsewhere. This is the veiling of attention and focus. For example, one might be looking for one’s glasses which is right on the table one is looking at. We all have experienced the veiling of this latter kind. 

In this latter type of veiling, one is said to be perceiving the object with no obstruction, but the perception is not attended to or grasped; it is registered but not perceived. It is this latter type of veiling that is closest to what I am about to say.

There is a state that is veiled to you in a similar fashion; it is not hidden to you; it is right in front of you, and in fact it is the only thing that is, but you fail to see it because your attention is elsewhere; because you are attending to something else. This world of phenomena that appears to be there is precisely that elsewhere; it is that something else. All that you think you see and deem to exist is nothing but like a drawing on a transparent screen that has neither a place nor a time. 

The nature of your ignorance is that of not knowing what’s most known and right there in front of you. Thus, you can’t snap out of your ignorance by reading, meditating, or any effort for that matter. All of these doings are akin to going around the house trying to find the very glasses you’re wearing. 

Remember when I said that that state is veiled to you in a similar fashion? It’s similar in the sense that something is veiled while fully present. The attention, or rather the gaze, to which I am referring is altogether different from the human attention that moves through your perceptions. That gaze is not from this world; it’s not a human gaze; your human attention is a fragment of that transcendent sight which sees through all cognition and all beings, including your mundane self-understanding as a human person. 

That state, the most obvious of all things, is veiled by its very obviousness and full presence. It is not a thing that is present or obvious, like the objects around us; that state is obviousness itself; it is presence itself. When you find a simple object around you that’s obviously present and there, know that the presence and the obviousness of that presence don’t belong to that object; on the contrary, these are the qualities of that state that are misappropriated to the objects of perception. Nothing you see has existence of its own; nothing has any qualities of its own. Nothingness cannot have qualities. The very sense of existence and realness of things, and all the qualities you think they have, are Its qualities and existence false superimposed on forms: as we fail to see It, we naturally appropriate these qualities to world phenomena. This world is nothing but emptiness; it is the fullness of that all-encompassing state that seems to have filled this emptiness. 

Once you are able to pull back your attention from this world of distractions, once you gather your rays and shift focus from things to their very appearing, from the movie to the screen itself, then all will become clear to you. You won’t need proof or arguments or constructs or theories. You won’t need books anymore. You won’t need to believe, for believing is for the blind. You’ll become calm and satiated, and no desire will be left in you. You’ll be akin to a king who’s eaten his heart out so that not even the best food in the world can stimulate his appetite. You’ll be eternally full, as you have always been. You only recognize it now. 

That state that is concealed by its blinding obviousness, that is your true nature; that is what and who you are, though whatness and whoness are below your station. But alas, this language can’t grasp your glory and proper station; that is only for those who join you and merge in you. Once you see it, you will know and understand all things; once you see it, nothing will be left undone. Doing is transcended, though this transcending is still another story told from the vantage point of the doers; from the vantage point of the transcendent reality, nothing has ever happened, not even your doing.  

There are two vantage points: the vantage point of unity and the vantage point of multiplicity.

He who seeks must hear it, and he who has seen it cannot help but speak it. It cannot be any other way, for that which speaks in the seer and hears in the seeker are the same; the separation exists only from the vantage point of multiplicity and is non-existent from the vantage point of unity. 

Philosophers, those who struggle to synthesize these vantage points in vain, have not understood what they’ve heard. Can the shadow be united with the light? Can the illusion be united with the projection! To unite presuppose duality, so I tell you this: don’t seek to synthesize these vantage points, for there are in reality no two vantage points. The duality of vantage points exists only from the vantage point of multiplicity. From the vantage point of unity, there’s no other vantage point, so there’s nothing else to unite with what is. What is is what it is.