Ontology: Absolute vs Relative

Ontology is the experience of being. While your mind is relative, your being is absolute. This page is the "Water" of the Academy—the fluid essence that underlies the geometric structures of the mind.

The absolute has no divisions, qualities, or limitations. It is non-temporal, non-local, and infinite. In this philosophy, I use the words Awareness and Consciousness interchangeably to describe this "ultimate" reality.

Awareness is not an object you can weigh or measure; it is the actual experiencing you are doing right now. It is the "Screen" upon which the movie of your life is projected. As Rupert Spira suggests, there are not two things: the screen and the image; there is only the screen. The "movie" of your world only appears when the reality of the screen is overlooked.

The relative is the domain of Minds. If Awareness is the Ocean, then your mind is a single droplet of that ocean.

A droplet has a boundary, a shape, and a temporary existence. It can be measured, tracked, and described. But the droplet is never "not water." It is a modulation of the ocean, inseparable from the source.

The phenomenon of Dissociation (as explored by Bernardo Kastrup) is the mechanism by which the Universal Mind subdivides itself into a profusion of individual "alters" or droplets. This is how Awareness experiences different points of view, always through dissociated minds relating to one another.

Your mind will struggle to comprehend the Absolute. That is its nature. A character in a movie cannot "see" the screen because they are made of the screen.

• The Mind casts experience into subjects and objects, self and world, this and that.
• Awareness is the unmistakable experiencing beyond words that exists before the mind starts its work.

Ask yourself: Who are you when you aren't telling stories about who you were or are?

If you honestly reflect, you will find that you are the experiencing of being aware of body, mind, and world. You are neither the body nor the mind; you are the non-local experiencing that remains constant while sensations, perceptions, and conceptions come and go.

This is Self-Realization. You are the Ocean, temporarily experiencing itself as a Droplet.