Q: Our real being is all the time with us, you say. How is it | تفحص خویش

Q: Our real being is all the time with us, you say. How is it that we do not notice it?
M: Yes, you are always the Supreme. But your attention is fixed on thing...s, physical or mental. When your attention is off a thing and not yet fixed on another, in the interval you are pure being. When through the practice of discrimination and detachment (viveka-vairagya), you lose sight of sensory and mental states, pure being emerges as the natural state.
Q: How does one bring to an end this sense of separateness?
M: By focussing the mind on 'I am', on the sense of being, 'I am so-and-so' dissolves; "I am a witness only" remains and that too submerges in 'I am all'. Then the all becomes the One and the One -- yourself, not to be separate from me. Abandon the idea of a separate 'I' and the question of 'whose experience?' will not arise.
I AM THAT – #Nisargadatta Maharaj

Where the first thought has left and the other is not arisen, that is Consciousness, that is Freedom, that is your own place, your own abode. You are always there, you see.

Shift attention, change the gestalt. Don't look at the figure, look at the background! If I put a big blackboard the size of a wall here and mark it with a white point and ask you, "What do you see?" Ninety-nine percent of you will not see the blackboard! (Laughs) You will say, "I see a little white spot." Such a big blackboard and its not seen, and only a little white spot, which is almost invisible is seen! Why? Because this is the fixed pattern of the mind. To look at the figure , not the blackboard, to look at the cloud , not at the sky; to look at the thought and not Consciousness.

That's all the teaching is. Always look to Consciousness. Always look to Consciousness and know this is what you are! This is your own place, your own abode, Stay Here. No one can touch you. Who can enter Here where you are? Even your mind cannot enter.
#Papaji

You have two thoughts.
Thought number one appears, and disappears.
Thought number two appears and disappears.
But at no time is there the disappearance of Awareness.
So, what exists, or what is present between the two thoughts?
Q: “Awareness.”

So from the point of view of thought, how long does that gap between two thoughts last?

Q: “Thought knows nothing of it.”

Thought knows nothing of it, because all objects can only appear in thought. So thought cannot know anything about the gap in between thoughts; and therefore it says it is non-existent. But if it was non-existent, then there would be no connection between the thoughts. There would be no continuity to experience.

So, the duration between two thoughts doesn’t take place in time. Time is only in thought. So from thought’s point of view, the duration between two thoughts is non-existent; there is no time there, there is nothing there.

Deep sleep is the gap between two dream states; and the dream state is just two thoughts (or two series of thoughts). So how long does that gap last?

Q: “It’s not in time.”

It’s not in time. Thought knows nothing of it. That’s why the non-objective experience of deep sleep (which is simply the zero-dimensional gap between two images or thoughts) seems to be non-existent from the point of view of thought; just like the gap between two thoughts seems to be non-existent. But it is your experience that Awareness is continuous…, When I say ‘your experience’, I mean it is Awareness’ experience: I am Continuous (or more accurately) I am ever-present. Deep sleep is not something that lasts in time. It is eternity. It is awareness.
#RupertSpira