the awakened eye - Cezanne and Nature's Eternity

encounters with nondual awareness

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paul cézanne:
"He was the father of us all"

Mont Saint Victoire
(detail)

Eternity is the term Cézanne
uses to refer to this ever-present
Reality and he understood the
purpose of art as
‘giving us a taste’ of this Eternity.

Beauty is not the attribute
of an object. It is inherent in
the fundamental nature of
experience. It is the experience
of recognizing that
Consciousness and Reality
are one.

seeing/drawing
as meditation

seeing without shadows

Rupert Spira
The Transparency of Things
a collection of contemplative
essays and conversations

nature's eternity continued

Consciousness is present during the appearance of any perception and, when the objective part of the perception disappears, it remains as it always is.

Nothing happens to Consciousness when a perception appears or disappears. It takes the shape of the perception but remains itself, just as a mirror takes on the appearance of an object and yet always remains exactly as it is.

We have no experience of the appearance or disappearance of Consciousness, in spite of the appearance and disappearance of perceptions.

Our experience is that Consciousness endures, that it is permanent. Likewise Reality, Existence, endures.

Of course this statement does not make sense, because it implies that Consciousness and Existence endure in time.

When perception vanishes, time vanishes, because time is the duration between two perceptions. In fact, even during the presence of a perception time is not present, only the illusion of time is present. During the so-called interval between two perceptions, not even the illusion of time is present.

So Consciousness and Reality do not endure forever in time. They are ever-present. Always now. They are Eternal. Time however, appears to exist, from time to time, within Consciousness.

Eternity is the term Cézanne uses to refer to this ever-present Reality and he understood the purpose of art as ‘giving us a taste’ of this Eternity.

He felt that art should lead us to Reality, indicate that which is real, evoke that which is substantial. It should lead us from appearance to Reality. It should point towards the essence of things. And it does so by using the insubstantial, fleeting appearances of sense perceptions, the ‘elements of all her (nature’s) changes.’

He did not say that art depicts Reality any more than literature describes it, but rather that it gives us a taste of Reality. It takes us to the direct experience, the intimate knowing that Consciousness, what we truly are, is the substance of Reality, that there is only one thing, that there is only Being.

William Blake expresses the same understanding when he says, “Every bird that cuts the airy way is an immense world of delight enclosed by the five senses.”

He uses the bird as a symbol of nature. He is saying that the Reality of the bird is ‘an immense world of delight,’ but that its Reality is veiled by the senses. By using the word ‘enclosed,’ he suggests that the senses somehow limit Reality. They condition its appearance.

It is significant that Blake describes the Reality of nature, of an object, as ‘delightful.’ Cézanne also says that the Reality of nature, which he calls her ‘Eternity,’ is experienced as a ‘thrill.’

Both Blake and Cézanne are suggesting that inherent in the oneness of Consciousness and Reality is the experience of ‘delight,’ that the experience is ‘thrilling.’

This is in line with Indian philosophy, which describes every experience as an expression of ‘nama rupa Sat Chit Ananda.’

‘Nama’ is ‘name.’ It is that part of an experience that is supplied or conditioned by thinking. It could be called the concept, the label that the mind uses to frame the experience. It says, “That is a chair.” The concept ‘chair’ is nama.

‘Rupa’ is ‘form.’ It is that part of an experience that is supplied by the senses. Each of the senses has their corresponding object in the world. The sense of seeing has its counterpart in the objects of sight. The sense of hearing has its counterpart in the objects of sounds, etc. The senses condition the way Reality appears to us depending on their own characteristics.

‘Nama’ and ‘rupa’ together constitute the appearance of nature or an object.

If we are to apprehend the real nature of experience, independent of the particular characteristics that are conferred upon it by the mind and senses, we have to denude our experience of that part of it that is supplied by the experiencing apparatus, the instruments of perception, that is the mind and the senses.

As we saw earlier from Cézanne’s statement, if we take away that which appears, the objective aspect of any experience, we are left with the undeniable and yet invisible experience of both Existence or Beingness and Consciousness.

So, in exploring the true nature of experience, we first remove name and form, ‘nama’ and ‘rupa,’ the veil of mind and senses in which Reality is ‘enclosed.’

This leaves us with the presence of two undeniable facts of experience, Existence and Consciousness, which in Indian philosophy are referred to as ‘Sat’ and ‘chit.’

In every experience there is something that is being experienced. That something, whatever it is, is real. It has Being. That is ‘sat.’

In every experience there is also something that experiences. There is ‘I,’ Consciousness. That something, whatever it is, is present. It is conscious. That is ‘chit.’

From the point of view of the apparent separate entity, we formulate our experience by saying, “I see that.” That is, ‘I,’ Consciousness, sees ‘that,’ the object or the world. ‘Chit’ experiences ‘Sat.’ They are considered to be two things joined by an act of knowing.

However, if we explore our experience carefully, we come to the understanding that Consciousness and Reality are one, that there is no separation between ‘I’ and ‘other’, between ‘me’ and ‘you,’ between ‘me’ and the ‘world,’ between ‘Chit’ and ‘sat.’

The experience of this realisation is known in India as ‘Ananda,’ which has traditionally been translated as ‘bliss.’ However, this translation can be misleading. It suggests that the realisation of Oneness is considered to be accompanied by a rare and exotic state. And this in turn initiates the search for an extraordinary experience, for something that is not simply this.

‘Ananda’ is perhaps better translated as Peace or Happiness, or simply Fulfilment. In fact it is very ordinary. It could be described as the absence of agitation or the ease of Being.

Peace and Happiness are normally considered to be a state of the body/mind that result from obtaining a desired object. However, in this formulation from the Indian tradition, Peace and Happiness are understood as being inherent in our true nature, and this accords with both Cézanne and Blake who describe the same experience as a ‘thrill,’ and a ‘world of delight.’

When we separate that part of our experience that is imposed or enclosed, as Blake put it, by the mind and senses, by the instruments of perception, Consciousness and Reality are realised to be one.

Their inherent unity is revealed. It is not created. Peace or Happiness is another name for that experience. It is very natural.

Although all objects ultimately come from this experience and are therefore an expression of it, there are a particular category of objects that could be called sacred works of art, that shine with the presence of this understanding and therefore have the power to convey or communicate it directly. They evoke it.

In classical Greece this experience was described as ‘Beauty.’

Beauty is not the attribute of an object. It is inherent in the fundamental nature of experience. It is the experience of recognising that Consciousness and Reality are one.

Such sacred works of art stir a deep memory in us. We recognise something in them. In this recognition Consciousness is recognising itself. Consciousness is remembering its own Reality, its own Being.

It looks in the mirror of experience and sees itself. It experiences its own Reality.

Such works of art give us the ‘taste of Eternity.’

Rupert Spira, The Transparency of Things, Contemplating the Nature of Experience, published by Non-Duality Press 2008