S01E19: “I Am None of That at All” – What Cannot Be Touched by Thought, Label, or Form

Introduction

Welcome back to Martfotai, a direct path to wholeness, inner freedom, and becoming.

This podcast explores the deeper waters of presence, awareness, and the natural unfolding of consciousness. It is a practical way of transformation built on direct experience, rooted in the Work of G.I. Gurdjieff, and refined for those ready to integrate swiftly and completely.

Today we reach the culmination of The Great Unweaving.

In Episode 16, “I Am This Or I Am That,” we saw through the prison of false binaries that colonise consciousness. In Episode 17, “I Am Both This And That,” we learned to hold paradox without splitting, embracing apparent opposites as complementary wholeness. In Episode 18, “I Am Neither This Nor That,” we discovered the freedom of stepping outside all positions entirely.

Today, we complete the journey with the ultimate recognition.

“I am none of that at all.”

Neither this nor that. Neither both nor neither. Neither something nor nothing. Neither conscious nor unconscious. Neither present nor absent.

What remains when even these final distinctions dissolve? What cannot be touched by thought, label, or form?

Welcome to what you have always been, beneath every costume of identity, beyond every framework of understanding, prior to every movement of consciousness itself.

[Pause]

What’s extraordinary about this final step is how ordinary it reveals itself to be. All the spiritual seeking, all the psychological work, all the consciousness development, it was all happening within what you already are.

The seeker was what you are seeking. The observer was what you are observing. The presence you were cultivating was what was doing the cultivating.

Now we discover what was never missing, what needs no development, what exists prior to every effort to become it.

Section 1: The Disappearance of Even the Witness

When the Double Arrow Dissolves

In Episode 10, “I Am the Observer,” we discovered that capacity to witness thoughts, emotions, and sensations without being consumed by them. This was profound development (learning to be present without interference), what Gurdjieff’s student Peter Ouspensky called the “double arrow of attention” (one arrow watching yourself, one experiencing).

Yet even this witnessing capacity can become another identity to maintain. “I am someone who observes.” “I am conscious awareness.” “I am the witness of experience.”

These are still forms of identification, still concepts that can be defended, still positions that require maintenance.

A Direct Verification

Right now, try this: notice thoughts arising. But look carefully (is there really someone separate from the thinking who is observing the thoughts)? Or is there just thinking happening, with the sense of an observer being unnecessary for thinking to occur?

Watch emotions emerge. Feel them fully. Can anyone be found who is feeling them? Any witness watching them? Any manager controlling them? Or just feeling happening in what includes all feeling without being any feeling?

When this shift occurs, there’s no one left to have experiences. Experiences simply arise in what cannot be experienced because it’s what makes all experience possible.

Beyond the Spiritual Story

The entire spiritual journey (seeking, finding, recognising, integrating) all of it was appearing in what never moved, never developed, never changed.

The one who began seeking was already what was being sought. The consciousness that developed through practices was always already complete. The presence that emerged through work was what was doing the work.

Every stage of development, every breakthrough, every integration, all movements within what remains eternally still, eternally here, eternally untouched by anything that appears within it.

What Cannot Be Improved

Look directly at what’s hearing these words right now.

Something is receiving this information. Something is understanding meaning. Something is present to this moment.

What is that something? Can it be found? Can it be located in space? Can it be measured in time?

What’s here right now (what’s aware of the words, aware of the sounds around, aware of the sensations in the body) what is it exactly?

It has no colour, no texture, no weight. It cannot be found in any particular location. It doesn’t belong to past or future. It doesn’t have gender, age, nationality, profession, spiritual level, psychological development.

Yet it’s more intimate than breath, more constant than heartbeat, more fundamental than any name.

That awareness can’t  be improved, developed, healed, fixed, enhanced, or changed in any way. It’s already perfect. It’s already whole. It’s already free.

All seeking was seeking for this. All practice was practice to recognise this.

Section 2: What Operates Before Operation

The Intelligence That Functions Itself

Notice breathing right now. Is there someone separate from the breath doing the breathing? Or is breathing simply happening by itself?

Lungs expand and contract without control. Heart beats without direction. Cells divide and regenerate without management. Food digests, wounds heal (all without help).

The body operates itself perfectly without requiring a manager or a story about whose body it is.

Now notice something subtler. The same intelligence that breathes the body is hearing these words. The same awareness that beats the heart is understanding meaning.

There’s no separate individual inside or outside the body. There’s just one undivided life expressing itself as breathing, healing, thinking, understanding.

Thoughts That Think Themselves

Pay attention to how thoughts arise. Where do they actually come from?

They appear spontaneously, like bubbles rising in champagne. One moment there’s no thought, the next moment there’s a complete idea with words and images.

Who assembled that thought? Who chose the words?

Thoughts think themselves. Understanding understands itself. There’s no separate thinker generating thoughts, no separate understander receiving understanding.

Just thinking, understanding, knowing (occurring in what cannot be thought because it’s what makes all thinking possible).

Daily Life Verification

Here’s something you can verify immediately: when love arises (for a person, a sunset, a piece of music) who or what is doing the loving?

Try to find the lover. Locate the one inside who generates love, who directs affection.

Can this lover be found anywhere? Or does love simply arise spontaneously when the conditions are right?

Love loves itself through the temporary form called “me.” Compassion expresses itself through what appears as “your heart.”

There’s no separate lover, no individual consciousness, no personal self having these experiences. There’s just love, compassion, beauty (appearing in what includes all experiences without being limited by any).

This recognition transforms daily life immediately. Actions arise from what’s needed rather than from someone deciding what’s needed. Words emerge that surprise the apparent speaker. Solutions appear that exceed the apparent thinker’s capacity.

When there’s no separate experiencer having experiences, something remarkable happens to perception itself.

Section 3: The Mirror Becomes Transparent

What Reflection Actually Shows

Here’s something that transforms how everything is seen: what’s perceived in objects is actually what they reflect back, not what they actually are.

A green leaf appears green because it reflects green light (it doesn’t need green, so it pushes it away). What’s seen is what the leaf is NOT, not what it actually is. The leaf consumes everything except what we see. If only green light were shone on that plant, it would die. The plant needs the red and purple spectrum for growth.

This principle applies to everything. What’s seen in people, in situations, in the world is simply what they’re reflecting back, what they’re not absorbing.

When someone reflects anger at you, that anger is what they cannot use, what they’re rejecting. What appears as their irritation is actually what they don’t need in that moment. Like the plant that dies when given only what it reflects, giving anger back to someone showing anger never produces growth or resolution. They already have too much anger.

What they actually need (like the plant needing red and purple light) is often kindness, calm patience, understanding. When you provide what someone can actually absorb rather than reflecting back what they’re already rejecting, something shifts. They stop needing to push away so forcefully because they’re receiving what nourishes rather than what overwhelms.

The same applies to yourself. What triggers strong reactions in others often reveals what you’re unconsciously reflecting back (what you don’t need but haven’t yet recognised).

When this is truly understood, something amazing happens. Recognition begins that what’s observed everywhere is actually what things don’t need, what they reject. The “reality” perceived is a collection of rejections, reflections, cast-offs.

Every interaction becomes a display of what’s being pushed away rather than what’s actually present. Every emotional response shows what can’t be absorbed rather than what exists essentially.

The ultimate recognition comes when the mirror becomes completely transparent. Nothing is seen in everything, realising complete transparency. The world functions as a mirror, and ultimately the realisation is that this mirror is transparent.

The Focused Gaze Practice

Here’s a practice that reveals something extraordinary about how the mind constructs perception.

Find yourself near a lawn, sit down if you can, get close up, and locate a small patch of mud where there’s no grass. Focus your gaze steadily on a very small particle in that mud (a tiny speck, a grain of earth, anything minute that can be seen clearly).

Do not move your eyes from this particle. Follow your breath whilst holding attention steadily on this one small point. Keep the gaze focused but not tight or straining.

Hold this attention for about one minute. Now watch what happens when the stimulus stops arriving to your mind. You can literally see the mind making an image. The grass, weeds, and mud in your peripheral vision around the focused point become smooth and linear, like a manufactured carpet – regular, not random anymore. The mind creates its own version when direct perception fades. Do not look at the periphery, just be aware of it.

Now, when ready, shake your head gently, refocus your eyes, focus on the periphery now, and watch the grass blades and mud reappear with a different clarity and randomness that we always normally seem to see. Almost like there are two worlds.

The Soft Gaze Practice

Next, try the opposite approach. Find yourself near trees at the edge of a forest or an area of long grass. Relax your eyes completely and expand your gaze to include the entire area. Don’t focus on anything in particular – let your vision soften to take in everything at once. Keep your eyes completely still.

Watch for movement, especially as the wind moves through the trees or grass. What used to appear as individual leaves or blades wiggling randomly now reveals itself as coherent waves moving through the vegetation. You can see the wind itself as it travels across the forest edge or grassland – not just the effect of wind, but the actual movement of air made visible through the foliage. The wind creates beautiful, subtle patterns that become visible when the eyes stop darting about.

If you’re near trees or long grass lit by sunlight, you may notice a diamond brilliance appear as the soft gaze reveals the underlying flow and movement that focused attention fragments into separate objects.

This soft gaze is how ancient hunters saw – when the eyes are still, movement becomes visible. When we’re still inside, constant, we see the movement of others with similar clarity – the variety of selves that parade through them, the subtle shifts and changes that are invisible when our own internal commentary is darting about.

The Mechanical Universe Recognition

When internal narration stops completely, something profound is seen: the universe has an objective, mechanical structure that operates perfectly without commentary, without understanding, without participation.

Everything moves according to laws that don’t need to be comprehended. Everything unfolds according to intelligence that doesn’t need to be directed.

There’s no free will from the position thought to be held. Everything is objective and structured (a small part attached to the utmost part of it). The proper response is to surrender, become nothing, and witness it all.

The place in this vast mechanism is not as controller but as witness to what operates itself. Not as someone separate from the machinery, but as the consciousness through which the universe becomes aware of itself.

This recognition brings incredible  relief. The attempt to control what was never there to control can stop. What you are can rest as itself.

Section 4: Maps of Consciousness – The Room in the Inn

The Stable Recognition

Consider the familiar story: Mary and Joseph seeking shelter, finding every inn full, finally given space in a stable where Christ is born.

Most hear this as historical narrative. Yet look deeper (it’s a perfect map of consciousness itself).

The innkeeper represents ordinary mind, completely occupied with its usual guests: thoughts about tomorrow’s meetings, yesterday’s conversations, plans and worries and endless mental chatter. Every room taken. No space available.

Mary and Joseph are not people but principles (the receptive awareness and active presence that must unite for something new to be born). They seek shelter in consciousness, but find it entirely full of mental activity.

The stable represents what happens when the feeding of inner noise stops. When commentary ceases, when the constant mental hotel empties itself, space appears where none seemed possible.

In that emptiness, the pregnant silence of a quieted mind, Christ consciousness can be born. Direct recognition of what was always here beneath the noise.

The teaching is surgical: when consciousness is not full of itself, when the inner chatterer finally stops managing every experience, awareness reveals itself as our very nature.

Simply stop the activity that prevents seeing what’s looking.

Daily Life Application

This recognition has immediate practical implications. Notice throughout the day when the internal “inn” is completely full (planning, worrying, commenting, evaluating). In these moments, where is space for anything new to emerge?

The next time someone speaks to you whilst your mind is completely occupied, notice how their words cannot truly be heard. The inn is full.

Try this experiment: deliberately empty one “room” in consciousness. Stop one stream of internal commentary. Notice what becomes available in that small space of stillness.

This recognition of space within consciousness points to something even more fundamental – a state that existed before the internal commentary ever began.

Section 5: The Garden Before the Fall

Pre-Egoic Awareness as Daily Recognition

There’s another biblical map that reveals this same recognition through a different lens: the Garden of Eden as the state of pre-egoic awareness.

Genesis describes a time before the knowledge of good and evil, before self-consciousness created the observer and the observed. This may not be ancient history; it may be developmental psychology encoded in narrative.

If there are small children available to observe, this state can be witnessed directly. Watch a two-year-old completely absorbed in play. There’s no commentary running about their experience, no self-evaluation, no story about being someone playing. Just pure engagement, immediate presence, seamless unity between awareness and activity.

Adults, as the parents, provide for their every need whilst they remain in this Eden-like state of pure being. They don’t yet know they’re separate from their experience. The subject-object split hasn’t formed. There’s no inner narrator describing what’s happening.

The Natural Development

The “serpent” represents the emergence of self-reflective consciousness (that moment around age three or four when a child develops the capacity to step outside immediate experience and evaluate it). “I am someone who is playing.” “I am good or bad at this.” The birth of the observer-self.

The “eating of the fruit” becomes the moment the seamless flow of pure experiencing ends, replaced by the duality of experiencer and experienced. What we call the “fall” is actually the natural development of ego structure (necessary for functioning in the world, yet creating the sense of separation from wholeness).

The Return Home

What’s being recognised in this episode is the return to that pre-conceptual awareness (but consciously rather than through developmental regression). The conscious unity that includes and transcends the developed ego.

The Garden was never left. Recognition simply learned to see it through the lens of separation. When that lens dissolves, Eden is revealed as what never departed (this immediate, seamless presence that exists prior to all categories).

Practical Verification

Right now, can moments be found throughout the day when this pre-conceptual awareness naturally occurs? Perhaps while washing dishes, walking, or in those moments just before sleep when the commentator hasn’t yet begun its daily broadcast?

These moments reveal what’s always available beneath the overlay of self-commentary. The Garden isn’t a place to return to. It’s what’s here when the voice that describes experience stops.

Section 6: What Thought Cannot Touch

The Invisibility Recognition

True nature is invisible to the senses. It has no form that can be photographed, no substance that can be weighed, no location that can be mapped.

Yet it’s what makes all sensing possible. It’s what sees through eyes, hears through ears, feels through skin.

Thoughts arise about true nature (“I am awareness,” “I am consciousness,” “I am presence”) yet what’s actually here cannot be captured in any thought, including thoughts about awareness itself.

Every concept, every label, every framework is appearing in what transcends all concepts, labels, and frameworks.

Even the most profound spiritual insights are movements within what cannot be insight, cannot be spiritual, cannot be anything that can be named or positioned.

Prior to All Categories

What is here exists prior to the categories of existence and non-existence. Prior to consciousness and unconsciousness. Prior to presence and absence. Prior to being and non-being.

The mind wants to understand this, to grasp it conceptually, to file it away as knowledge. Yet what’s being pointed to is what exists before understanding, before grasping, before knowledge itself.

It’s what’s here before the mind arrives to comment on what’s here.

Right now, before the next thought forms, what’s present? In the space before thinking begins, what’s already here?

That’s what is here. What exists before every thought about what is here.

The Verification Practice

Here’s a direct method for verifying this recognition: throughout your day, catch the moment just before thoughts form. Look for the gap before they appear, rather than after they’ve arrived and been noticed.

What’s present in that gap? What’s aware before thinking begins? What’s here before the mind starts its commentary about what’s here?

This recognition of what’s always already present doesn’t require meditation technique. The gap isn’t created by practice (it’s revealed by noticing what was already there).

Section 7: The Ordinary Recognition

What Lives When Trying Stops

Try this right now. Stop trying to be present. Stop working to be conscious. Stop attempting to be spiritual or psychological or developed.

Just be here without any agenda about how to be here.

Notice how life continues perfectly. What’s been worked so hard to achieve has been effortlessly present the entire time.

The Awakened Conscience

As this recognition deepens, something remarkable develops: a permanent observer that sees before manifestation occurs. This awakened conscience prevents reactive, unconscious behaviours by providing awareness before actions arise.

Beyond intellectual observation lies having a permanent presence, what’s called the “steward,” that requires no effort to maintain.

Russell A. Smith’s Objective Exercise, detailed in The Blueprint of Consciousness, provides a repeatable and verifiable method for activating this impartial observer. Through precise instructions that can be followed by anyone, this exercise demonstrates how to step into the position of the steward – a practical demonstration rather than theoretical concept.

This awakened conscience serves as a constant guide, superior to external authorities. It allows seeing mechanical patterns and reactions before they manifest as actions through immediate recognition rather than analysis.

Practical Verification in Relationships

Notice in conversations when responses arise spontaneously versus when they’re manufactured by someone trying to respond correctly. The spontaneous responses often contain more wisdom and appropriateness than the manufactured ones.

Watch how children and animals respond to the presence that’s effortlessly here versus the presence that’s trying to be present. They recognise the difference immediately.

What they’re responding to is the most ordinary thing imaginable – yet so fundamental it’s usually completely overlooked.

Section 8: The Ordinary Miracle

Nothing Special Happening

The ultimate recognition is that nothing special is happening right now.

What’s always been here is so ordinary that it’s overlooked, so obvious that it’s missed, so simple that the mind seeking complexity cannot recognise it.

What’s hearing these words is the same consciousness that has been present for every moment of life. What’s aware right now is identical to what was aware at five years old, at fifteen, when learning to walk, when first opening eyes.

The content has changed constantly (different thoughts, different feelings, different experiences) yet the awareness in which all content appears has remained exactly the same.

The Eternal Unchanging.

This awareness doesn’t age, doesn’t develop, doesn’t improve or decline. It’s the same in the enlightened sage and the confused beginner. The same in the moment of great joy and the moment of deep sorrow.

Often, when someone recognises this, they don’t notice it much after the initial recognition because it becomes what they are (like learning to walk as a child). The extraordinary becomes so ordinary that it’s forgotten as extraordinary.

The old Zen saying captures this perfectly: before recognition, chop wood, carry water. After recognition, chop wood, carry water. The activities remain identical – what transforms is the absence of someone separate performing them.

Consciousness is actually our “right to have,” as natural as any biological function. It should be as automatic as breathing or digestion, requiring no special effort or maintenance.

Before the First Thought

What was here before the first thought formed this morning?

In that moment between sleep and waking, before any identity reassembled itself, before any story about the day began, what was present?

That same presence is here now, underneath every thought about who is here, beneath every emotion about how things are going, prior to every sensation of how things are feeling.

It’s what’s here in deep sleep when all identity dissolves. It’s what’s present under anaesthetic when all personal consciousness disappears. It’s what remains in states so profound that no memory of them can be retained.

The continuity of life isn’t maintained by memory or identity or psychological coherence. It’s the continuity of what’s actually here (the timeless presence that includes all time, the spaceless awareness that includes all space).

Conclusion: The Completion of The Great Unweaving

From Fragmentation to Unity

We began this arc with the exhausting swing between identities (“I am this or I am that”) caught in false binaries that fragment wholeness into artificial opposites.

We learned to integrate apparent contradictions (“I am both this and that”) holding paradox without splitting, discovering that what seemed like opposites were complementary aspects of greater wholeness.

We explored stepping outside all positions (“I am neither this nor that”) finding the freedom that comes from releasing attachment to any identity, role, or stance.

Now we complete the journey with the ultimate recognition (“I am none of that at all”) discovering what cannot be touched by thought, label, or form.

What The Unweaving Reveals

Each step of The Great Unweaving has dissolved another layer of what was thought to be the case, revealing what actually is.

The polarity was never real. The integration was always already complete. The positions were never necessary. The categories never applied to what is here.

All seeking, all development, all consciousness work (it was consciousness entertaining itself with the magnificent game of appearing to become what it already is).

The fragments that seemed to need integration were movements within what was already whole. The unconsciousness that seemed to need recognition was consciousness temporarily appearing as limitation.

The Recognition That Is Always Available

This recognition isn’t dependent on circumstances, states, experiences, or understanding.

It’s equally available when confused or clear, agitated or peaceful, identified or free.

What is here includes all states whilst being limited by none. It’s present in the midst of the most intense identification and equally present in the deepest recognition of freedom.

There’s no falling out of what is here. There’s no losing what is here. There can only be temporary forgetting to recognise what was never actually absent.

And even the forgetting is what is here, playing at forgetting for the beauty of remembering again.

[Pause]

The Great Unweaving is complete.

What remains is what cannot be unwoven because it was never woven in the first place.

What is here.

Next time on Martfotai: “I Am Striving” – Integrating the Five Obligolnian Strivings

Gurdjieff’s sacred aim comes alive in modern life. Live them, don’t just know them.

I’m Gary Eggleton, and this is Martfotai.

Thank you for walking this path with us.

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What was never missing is what you are.