Transparency

I chanced across these words today:

"When the eye finds nothing to see, that no-thingness is perceived as space. When the ear finds nothing to hear, that no-thingness is perceived as stillness. When the senses, which are designed to perceive form, meet an absence of form, the formless consciousness that lies behind perception and makes all perception, all experience, possible, is no longer obscured by form." Eckhart Tolle, A New Earth, p. 218

I've read these three sentences several times, with long pauses in between, and every time new layers of meaning float up. In a way the senses seem like openings that become wadded up with the "stuffing" of sensory stimuli that actually blocks or distracts from a deeper perception. This is quite a flip-flop from my normal way of thinking: seeing and blindness have reversed places.

But more to the point and what really interests me, is this question: What is there to be aware of when there is nothing to be aware of; that is, when the slate is wiped clean, so to speak, and there is nothing plugging up the nervous system- no sensations or thoughts- then what is there left to be aware of? This is a hypothetical question, because as long as we're alive there are some sensations and/or thoughts present in every waking moment. But what is there to be aware of in those moments of profound, alert, quiescence when there are almost no thoughts or sensations present? Franklin Merrell-Wolff talks about attention-without-an-object, and this interests me.

When there's nothing to be aware of, then awareness is aware of itself. Awakeness is awake to the fact that it is awake. It sounds a bit garbled but to me it's the most beautiful thing in the world- it's the cosmos becoming awake to itself through this human consciousness that I am. There is a boundless transparency to this consciousness awake to itself, and it is possible to rest in this transparency.

(Gratitude for image above, from  coachaljohnson.wordpress.com/.../

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