Our last Meetup was a beautiful opportunity to realise the limits of language. Words, however well spelt or assembled together, remind us too often of their meaning we already know - or what we think we know.
Words as simple as “the gap” may have many possible connotations: ie "The silent gap between thoughts", "Moments in between", or “The gap between What is and What is not" with all its variations...
The specific gap that was referred here in the words of Jiddu Krisnamurthi refers to no great mystery: the sense of being a separate individual in an alien world, this sense of separation that is the primary source of our anxiety and feelings of loneliness. From early childhood most of us experience this gap between "the subject, me, " and "the objects, the world out there”. We then carry this gap that feels very real through adulthood. As a result, we deeply and sometimes desperately long to feel loved and reunited with the whole.
It is a well-oiled mechanism. When the thought “I” arises, so does its thought counter part: “the other”, “the others”, “the world”, etc… . As a result, “me, subject” views objects as alien and distant, hence the gap! The moment the “I” thought comes up, misery starts as the sense of separation make us yearn to feel whole again.
When the “I thought" does not arise – which happens to be more often than we are ready to admit - this active mind of ours is at rest. There is a profound recognition of this sense of peace and natural ease and contentment: there is no subject, there is no object, no time and space. This gap between subject and object is intimately and immediately "seen/known" as an imaginary gap.
There is just all pervasive “What is”. There is absolutely no need to mind a gap, or to fill a gap by reconnecting supposedly disconnected parts. There is “What is", an indivisible timeless spaciousness dancing its dance.
"To begin with I, Awareness, am found as the witness in the background of experience. Firstly, objects appear into the background and I shine in the foreground of all experience. Then, the apparent distinction and distance between Myself and objects dissolves, and I am found in everything and everyone, and everyone and everything is found in Me." Rupert Spira
To illustrate this imaginary gap between subject and object, we watched the following extract and listened to a guided meditation: