Introspection - 8 : I Was Never Born | Path of Knowledge ज्ञानमार्ग

Introspection - 8 : I Was Never Born

Tarun Pradhaan

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Masters will tell you that the consciousness was never born, will never die, is immortal, is eternal, is beyond time. It never started and it can never end. A religious person might simply believe it all blindly, which really does nothing for him, but a seeker will not settle for anything less than a direct experience of it. So how to get that direct experience?

A direct experience is always self-evident, clear, logical, brutally honest and lacks any beliefs or assumptions. If your experience is polluted by concepts, ideas, beliefs, assumptions, fluffy unicorn stories, bookish stuff or testimony of others etc. it is not the direct experience, it is a fantasy. Please know this clearly - no assumptions are allowed.

There are four ways to know the answer to this question - self-enquiry, realization that time is non-existent, realizing that you do not change, and witnessing death and birth directly. Self-enquiry or introspection is the easiest and takes only a few minutes. Experiencing non-existence of time needs a very calm mind that can watch how time gets created out of eternal now, but once you see this, you have the answer because birth and death happen in time and are therefore non-existent. Death/birth are nothing but change, and if you see that you never change, it follows that you will remain the same, never die and will be never born. Forth way is beyond my pay-grade, I won't even attempt to write about it.

So we will attempt the easiest way. Ask yourself - When were you born?

You will instantly get a date of birth, its ok, its not entirely false. Now try to go to the experience of birth which you think happened on that date. Well, most of us cannot get there, at most you will get memories of childhood, no memories of being born. You can ask others, but remember you are trying to know by your own direct experience, this is the rule of the game. Anyhow, others will tell you that you were indeed born, and they saw it with their own eyes. But, there is a catch, they saw only your body, a tiny one, and since you already know you cannot be a body (and definitely not that tiny one), you can't trust them. No one obviously saw your consciousness taking birth, if you are unsure, just ask them and see a puzzled look in their eyes, its funny.

Now, you can say that you were born, but you do not remember it. Note that this is an assumption. Do you remember that you ate potato chips 20 years ago on a particular date? If you don't, its silly to say that you did eat them on that day, you just don't remember now. Its only your imagination, there is no way for you to know that. Past can be known only via memory, and you have no memory of birth.

You can just shake your head at this point and say - I know I was born, I don't remember it, don't have any experience of it, but since I'm here, it confirms that I was born, else I wouldn't be here. That's true, your body was born, and a mind was born out of millions of experiences since the birth of the body, your memory is the proof. But we are not talking about body/mind here, we are interested in the Self, the pure consciousness, the real you. Your body/mind exists "here" but where is you? Where is "here"? The assumption is that your existence implies a start. But we steer clear of assumptions. Perhaps it does, but then where is the evidence? A seeker demands evidence.

But perhaps you are right, you just forgot that you were born, happens, we forget useless things fast :D. Now your mind is really challenged, and you will probably say - I was simply unconscious when I was born, I became conscious later, and then memories started forming. A very bad argument, you see. We are trying to get to the birth of consciousness, not of unconsciousness. Just ask yourself - how did the experience of unconscious birth looked like to you? What a silly question, if I was unconscious, there would be no experience. Yes, exactly, you don't have any experience of being born in unconscious state, so why would you just assume that?

Ask yourself - how would any unconscious experience look like? You will find that there are no such experiences in your entire life. "Unconscious state" is only an assumption, you do not know any such state, its merely social conditioning. All of our experiences involve consciousness, it is by necessity. Doesn't matter if you remember them or not.

Ok, so now your mind can say - perhaps I was born, I do not remember it because the memories were not formed, brain was still developing, and any impressions got erased, but I was conscious at birth. Good thinking there. But think again, you will look like a fool. If consciousness was already there while you were born, then it means consciousness was not born, it was already there witnessing the birth of a body.

Now, we shift to the person or identity. You are not the body, but perhaps you are the personality - the jumble of thoughts, emotions, history, likes/dislikes, names, jobs and relations. A bit flimsy compared to a solid body, but maybe that's how things are. You may say I'm the mind, I think therefore I am. All very good, and you will find that the person gradually appeared as mind received a barrage of life experiences. Your genetic memory and conditioning created it out of thin air. Nice, but the only problem is you are not a person, you are the one that has a personality, an illusory identity, you are simply a witness of this non-physical jumble of stuff - the mind. Mind was born, and will die, just like the body, but you cannot say the same about yourself.

You will find that there is birth, but of objects, possessions, experiences, memories etc., not of you. You will find that all these are experiences, scenery, that keeps changing in front of you. Somewhere somehow you simply assumed that you also appeared with them and will be gone with them. Birth and death are only your assumptions, not your fault, everyone sees it this way, unless somebody points out the problems such thinking spawns.

All there is, is only Experiencing. Experiencing of birth implies an experiencer, and if that experiencer is already present experiencing its own birth, then it is not experiencing its own birth, its experiencing something else being born while wrongly assuming it itself is being born. Its a temporary forgetting and attachment to the scenery. In other words - ignorance. Experiencing its own birth is an impossibility for an experiencer, because it demands its own presence at its own birth. It is a clear absurdity, you see. It is stupidity to assume that the experiencer can be born. You are that experiencer. You never had that experience, and since experience is all there that exists, birth does not exist, as its experience does not exist and cannot exist. This is certain, this is by necessity. This is a must.

Another way to think about it is by using your direct experience of your consciousness, which appears as no-thing, nothing... Its not even an experience strictly speaking, because it is the experiencer. Then it is not even the experiencer, there is just Experiencing. For convenience, we will simply say that you are nothingness at the core - just Emptiness. If you have that direct experience (easy to have it), then you will realize that it is not possible for nothingness to appear, there is nothing to appear ! And it is not possible for it to disappear, it is already nothing ! Well, that was a mind bender, but you will see that the mind stops here, it can't think now, and the concepts of birth and death simply fall apart like a house of cards, they are meaningless. You've been applying meaningless concepts to yourself, you see it now clearly.

There will be more questions and doubts your mind will throw at you, but you get the point. You will never find a clear evidence of your own birth, and by you I mean the consciousness that your are essentially. No birth means no death. Only that which can take birth can die, this is by definition of death. Its done, you have seen yourself that death and birth are just concepts, assumptions, ideas. There is just change, one form into another, a changing scenery. Belief in birth/death of the Self is ignorance, and now you are free from it :). See the implications of this important realization, ponder over it, apply it in practice.

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Introspection - 8 : I Was Never Born

Tarun Pradhaan