Home

About

William Samuel

Books
Video
Audio

Mission

Journal Notes
Reflections
Q&A

Essays

Links

Email Us

 

 

William Samuel & Friends
Sandy Jones
Literary Executor

 

 

 

William Samuel & Friends

 

 

A LETTER ABOUT
THE SIMPLICITY OF AWARENESS

By William Samuel

Dear David,

Awareness is not here and the tree there. The tree is seen within Awareness, just as all sights are. The sound of the wind is not in the tree there. The tree, the wind and the sound are here, within this Awareness that is aware right now. An island or a continent, whether seen with the eye, or thought of as an idea, is included within this here-and-now consciousness. So is the "sea" that surrounds the island. Abraham, Moses, Jesus, Buddha, Mohammed, the mountain, bird, tree, Mary, Bill, George Washington or Next-Door-Nelly are not images out there, not entities separate nor apart from us.

Do we see people and things differently when this point is understood? Not immediately. The tree looks just as it did before-so does Nelly-but we comprehend that they are not separate nor apart from the Awareness-I-am. They never have been. We perceive that they and this Awareness are one and the same! Indeed, they are the Awareness I am!

I will never forget when I first came to understand this. Picking up a pen, I wrote:

NOW I look across the way and see a tree-that tree is ME!

It is not separate nor apart from me-my very Self I see!

This is MY Kingdom! My Kingdom is ME! All "things" have their being "in" this Awareness I be.

Why, it truly has been my Father's good pleasure to give the Kingdom to me!

(From The Melody of the Woodcutter and the King)

This is what Jesus meant when he declared:

...I am the ALL, the All came forth from Me and the All attained to me. Cleve a piece of wood, I am there; lift up the stone and you will find Me there.

(E. J. Brill, The Gospel According to Thomas, Log. 77. c. Harper & Bro., 1959.)

David, this idea of the onlyness and all-inclusiveness of Awareness need not be strange and unfamiliar to you. Consider the screen on the television set. All the images are included within a single and all-inclusive screen. All the people and things being depicted as stories, news programs or commercials are actually shadows and images on a single screen. Everything is included within the screen, as the screen. Exactly so, each of us lives forever alone with (as) a single conscious Awareness, within which all things-all the sights and sounds of experience-are included. It is in this sense we state that an object of perception is not separate from the perceiving.

Inspect this idea for a time; you will find it is absolutely true-and very simple!

Excerpt from "A Guide To Awareness And Tranquillity" (1968)

Return to Archives

 

Return To Archives