If the mind is a localized contraction of unbounded consciousness, it can be termed microcosm. And if infinite multiplicity of minds exists, then their collective can be termed macrocosm. What knows or witnesses each mind and all minds is none other than consciousness.
Consciousness or awareness knows and is the knowing in all experience of mind, individual or collective. Awareness is also the space—unit or cosmic—within which all experience occurs. Awareness is in the final analysis the ingredient out of which all experience is made.
Mind is none other than awareness yet awareness is more than mind. From finite mind’s perspective, mind expands and merges into consciousness. Yet, from the perspective of consciousness, nothing happens and everything is as it is in their suchness—empty luminous dynamic aware being. Divested of objects, mind dissolves and only consciousness remains.
Consciousness witnessing a single finite mind can be designated unit consciousness. Consciousness witnessing the multiplicity of minds in their collective can be designated cosmic consciousness. Yet, in their own natural stance, unit and cosmic consciousness is but one unbroken seamless flow of sky-like pristine knowing, designated and distinguished only by language and conception.
So it is for all I have written thus far—mind, consciousness, finite, infinite, unit and cosmic are but designations imputed by language and conception. Language and conception are but activities of finite mind in the sphere of time, space, and person. None of these exist inherently from their own side independent of language and conception. Mind and awareness, finite and infinite, unit and cosmic, as cognized and experienced, are ultimately free of any trace of inherent existence independent of language and conception. In short, they are all empty of inherency. This is emptiness (sunyata). This is the suchness (tathata) of all phenomena and noumena. Even emptiness and suchness, as ideas and words, are empty of themselves as inherently existing!
Does this automatically mean that ultimately there is no absolute truth outside language and conception? No. For what we do not know, we do not know. What we have not experienced, we have not. Nothing we can articulate exists independent of our linguistic and ideational frame of reference. But it remains possible that impervious to language and idea is reality as it is, ungraspable by thought and all manner of speech.
In the end, only grace, if it is real, breaking through into all that we are can reveal all that was, and is, and is to come. In utter silence empty beyond emptiness, finally the strange unspeakable light shines and the wordless word speaks. Even so, I have spoken too much.
