经验的主体和客体

你所能看到、听到、尝到、碰触到和闻到的东西，当然，都是感官的客体(objects)。它们是你所经验到的。但谁是那个主体(subject)，那个经验者呢?比如，你现在说:“嗯，当然，我是陈淑贞，一个资深的会计师，45岁，离婚，有两个孩子，台湾人，我就是那个主体，那个经验者。”其实你错了。陈淑贞，和其他所有与陈淑贞这个心理概念认同的事物，都是经验的客体，不是那个经验的主体。

每一个经验都有三种可能的成分:感官觉受、思想或心理的意象(images)，还有情绪。陈淑贞，资深会计师，45岁，两个孩子的母亲，离过婚，台湾人，这些都是思想，所以它们是你在思考这些想法的时候，所经验到的一部分。这些和其他你可以谈论或是想到的关于自己的事情，都是客体，不是主体。它们是你的经验，不是经验者。关于你是谁，你还可以加上另外一千个定义(想法)，这样做当然会增加你自己经验的复杂性(还有充实你的心理咨询师的荷包)。但是，这样还是找不到主体——就是在所有经验出现之前就已经存在的那个经验者。没有他的话，根本就没有经验可言。所以到底谁是经验者呢?当然是你。那你又是谁呢?意识。那么意识又是什么呢?这个问题没有办法回答。一旦你回答了它，你就歪曲它了，使它成为另外一个客体。意识，传统的说法是心灵(spirit)，是无法用一般文字来理解的，而试着去寻找它也是徒劳无功。

所有的知晓(knowing)都是在二元对立的范畴内，受限于主体和客体，知晓者和被知者。那个主体，我，一个知晓者，没有它的话，任何事物都无法被知晓、被觉察、被思考或被感觉到，所以它一定是要维持一个永远无法被知晓的状态。这是因为那个“我”是没有形相的。只有形相才能被知晓，然而，没有那个无形的向度的话，这个有形的世界就无由存在。它是这个世界生灭于其中的光明空间。那个空间就是我本是的那个生命，它是无时间性的。“我本是”是无时间性的，永恒的。在那个空间里发生的事，都是相对而短暂的:乐与苦，得与失，生与死。

去发掘内在空间并且寻得那个经验者的最大障碍就是，你被那个经验迷惑而在其中丧失了自己，意思就是意识在它自己的梦中迷失了。你被每一个思想、情绪、经验欺骗到了一个程度，以至于你事实上已经在一个梦幻的状态中了。这已经变成了几千年以来，人类一个普遍的状态。虽然你无法知晓意识，你却可以意识到它就是你自己。

无论你在何处，你可以在任何情况下直接感受到它。你可以在此时此地感受到，它就是你的临在。就是在这个内在空间中，这一页的句子能够被认知到并且转变成思想。它就是隐于幕后的本我(I am)。你在读和想的这些字句是幕前的东西，而本我则是幕后的基础，它是支持每一个经验、思想和感受的幕后背景。

WHO IS THE EXPERIENCER?

What you see and hear, taste, touch, and smell are, of course, sense objects. They are what you experience. But who is the subject, the experiencer? If you now say, for example, “Well, of course, I , Jane Smith, senior accountant, forty-five years old, divorced, mother of two, American, am the subject, the experiencer,” you are mistaken. Jane Smith and whatever else becomes identified with the mental concept of Jane Smith are all objects of experience, not the experiencing subject

Every experience has three possible ingredients: sense perceptions, thoughts or mental images, and emotions. Jane Smith, senior accountant, forty-five years old, mother of two, divorced, American – these are all thoughts and therefore part of what you experience the moment you think these thoughts. They and whatever else you can say and think about yourself are objects, not the subject. They are experience, not the experiencer. You can add a thousand more definitions (thoughts) of who you are and by doing so will certainly increase the complexity of the experience of yourself (as well as your psychiatrist's income) but, in this way, you will not end up with the subject, the experiencer who is prior to all experience but without whom there would be no experience.

So who is the experiencer? You are. And who are you? Consciousness. And what is consciousness? This question cannot be answered. The moment you answer it, you have falsified it, made it into another object. Consciousness, the traditional word for which is spirit, cannot be known in the normal sense of the word, and seeing it is futile. All knowing is within the realm of duality – subject and object, the knower and the known. the subject, the I, the knower without which nothing could be known, perceived, thought, or felt, must remain forever unknowable. This is because the I has no form. Only forms can be known, and yet without the formless dimension, the world of form could not be. It is the luminous space in which the world arises and subsides. That space is the life that I Am. It is timeless. I Am timeless, eternal. What happens in that space is relative and temporary: pleasure and pain, gain and loss, birth and death.

The greatest impediment to the discovery of inner space, the greatest impediment to finding the experiencer, is to become so enthralled by the experience that you lose yourself in it. It means consciousness is lost in its own dream. You get taken in by every thought, every emotion, and every experience to such a degree that you are in fact in a dreamlike state. This has been the normal state of humanity for thousands of years.

Although you cannot know consciousness, you can become conscious of it as yourself. You can sense it directly in any situation, no matter where you are. You can sense it here and now as your very Presence, the inner space in which the words on this page are perceived and become thoughts. It is the underlying I Am. The word you are reading and thinking are the foreground, and the I Am is the substratum, the underlying background to every experience, thought, feeling.