Nonconceptual Reality

Nonconceptual Reality is how things are. It is direct perception of reality without the involvement of the mind. It is both presence and absence, but also neither. It is neither self nor no-self, nor the absence of both self and no-self. It is both being and nonbeing and neither. It is everything and it is nothing. Whenever there is negation or affirmation then there is conceptualization, and the true reality is gone. And hence we call reality as it is the Nameless; it cannot be named. (The Pearl Beyond Price, pg 466)

Nonconceptual reality is not the absence of the physical world; it is the perception that the physical dimension does not exist independently, that it is part of a larger reality just as the surface of the body is part of the whole of the body. If you see the skin as one layer of the whole, the rest of the body, the depth of it can be perceived at the same time. It is the same with physical reality – physical reality as a whole is the surface. Seeing the dimension deeper than physical reality allows the porousness, the permeability of the concepts. Seeing nonconceptual reality, what is, does not eliminate the usual world that we perceive. It is as it is, except that it appears more porous. Things are not as discrete from each other as they usually appear to be. We see that they are made out of the same thing -–the space, the earth, the table, the rug, me, you. We’re all made out of the same thing. It’s a homogeneous existence. This homogeneous existence is nonconceptual in the sense that there is nothing you can say about it. When you say something about it, you tend to close it off. The less you say about nonconceptual reality, the more it will open up and appear as it actually is (Diamond Heart Book 4, pg 313)

Nonconceptual reality, filters and experience

To experience things without concepts means to experience things without the past, with absolutely no mind, because mind is the filter we put on reality. When we speak here of experience without mind, we mean without discursive or discriminating mind, not without awareness. The nonconceptual is what is, without the overlay of our past experience, our past prejudices, and our minds. (Diamond Heart Book 4, pg 298)

Nonconceptual reality and functioning

In other words, the Nonconceptual Reality is what functions, without functioning being perceived as separate in any way from the presence of Reality. There is no conceptualization whatsoever, so there is no differentiation between functioning and what functions. It is as if when the hand moves it is not your hand, but the hand of the true Reality, which is nothing but the true Reality. The Nameless Reality is you, is the hand, and is the movement of the hand. (The Pearl Beyond Price, pg 467)

Nonconceptual reality and the senses

The attachment to the channels of our senses is a major barrier against the experience of the nonconceptual. Understanding how the senses work will help to clarify the difficulty. This understanding is not possible to someone who has not experienced anything beyond the senses, or who might not even think about such a possibility. But when you experience things without using your physical senses, you begin to see how your physical senses tend to prejudice you in a certain direction. (Diamond Heart Book 4, pg 299)

Nonconceptual Realms

The nonconceptual is the same as the Absolute, except that there is consciousness. As the nonconceptual, which I called the Nameless because there is no name for it, I know, and I know that I know. But I don’t know what I know. This level of knowing does not involve recognition of things. (Diamond Heart Book 4, pg 322)

The capacity to discern differences in the field of our awareness is a fundamental element of our consciousness. But here we need to make a difficult and subtle distinction: in describing this capacity we want to discriminate it from the capacity to actually recognize the forms that arise. So in what we are calling pure perception, associated with what is traditionally called nonconceptual awareness, there is the perception of differences within a field without recognition of those differences. There is awareness that there are different forms, but in pure perception these forms are not discriminated in such a way that they can be recognized or named. This is consciousness with no mind involved, awareness with no knowing of any kind. There is merely the awareness of shapes, colors, movement, qualities; there is no recognition, knowing, or understanding of what one is perceiving. There is differentiation but not discrimination. We refer to this perception without recognition as nonconceptual awareness, for recognition and knowing require concepts. (Inner Journey Home, pg 49)

In recognizing that pure awareness is nonconceptual, we discover new and surprising truths about Reality. We see that our being is fundamentally beyond mind, beyond discriminating knowing. We see that, since nonconceptual awareness is the ground of all manifestation, Reality is independent of our minds, and manifestation is not the creation of our thoughts. Without manifestation there would be no awareness, and since awareness is ultimately nonconceptual, the forms in manifestation are not conceptual either. This is a radical discovery. It illuminates the Reality beyond our individual minds, revealing that the differentiation in manifestation is beyond mind. We do not need discriminating knowing to perceive differentiation. Differentiation is inherent in manifest reality, and it ontologically precedes the dimension of basic knowledge, the nous dimension. The basic knowledge of pure presence simply adds discrimination to the already present differentiation of forms in manifest reality. (Inner Journey Home, pg 328)

Nonconceptual Reality is inherently differentiated as the world we normally see, but in the immediate experience of pure awareness we do not recognize the elements of our world, even though we clearly perceive them. In other words, differentiation is there prior to discrimination. To put it more analytically, true nature manifests as a nonconceptual ground that differentiates into all the forms of appearance, and its dimension of pure presence develops the differentiated forms into discriminated ones. Differentiation creates differences, but discrimination makes these differences knowable. (Inner Journey Home, pg 329)

True Nature and the nonconceptual

Reality is then nothing but true nature that is constantly displaying itself in various and changing forms. Coemergent nondual presence does not exclude anything. In includes true nature in all of its dimensions and aspects, all of physical reality including our bodies, and our subjective experience with all of its content. We experience this totality as an indivisible truth, where all of its dimensions and forms coexist in total harmony, a harmony that appears in the orderly pattern of the logos. Since we understand this condition to be the objective truth of things we term this wholeness Reality. It is what actually is in its true ontological nature. When we do not see it this way we are simply perceiving through some obscuration or veil, some belief or representation, or from a particular vantage point. In other words, we refer to it as Reality because it is the real; it is how things are when perceived with no subjective filters. We may perceive Reality as it is, completely objectively, or in one degree or another of approximation. Our experience and perception can vary with various factors, but Reality is always a coemergent nondual wholeness. (Inner Journey Home, pg 443)