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The Absence of Confusion
Having seen that you are a bundle of memories held together by attachment, step out and look from the outside. You may perceive for the first time something which is not memory. You cease to be a Mr-so-and-so, busy about his own affairs. You are at last at peace.
You realize that nothing was ever wrong with the world — you alone were wrong and now it is all over. Never again will you be caught in the meshes of desire born of ignorance.
~ Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj
When all these cycles of body and mind stop functioning, all that’s left is awareness itself, the unconditioned open space of pure knowing, but this knowingness now has no object whatsoever.
This is why the moment of death is held to be so special, for it provides the most precious opportunity. At the utmost critical juncture between life and death, with the body teetering at the very edge of existence, the absence of confusion allows for the experience of luminous emptiness. This is the same aspect of mind that is always revealed when we recognize a gap in the conditioned mind, when the clouds of confusion part and allow for an experience of nonconceptual awareness.
If our bodies expire while our minds rest in recognition of emptiness, then we are forever liberated. We have nothing more to learn. In luminous emptiness — the deathless realm…
