Method 107 · Nondual and expansive contemplation
One Awareness in All Beings
Awareness in all beings AdvancedIn the app
An advanced nondual contemplation that regards the awareness in every living being, human or otherwise, as sharing a single underlying nature.
Understand
Look out of a window and you might see a neighbour walking a dog, a few birds on a wire and someone hurrying for a bus. Each of them is, in their own way, aware: of warmth and cold, of hunger, of noise, of each other. This method invites a wide view of that ordinary fact. It considers the possibility that the awareness present in every creature is not a vast collection of separate sparks but one awareness, appearing in countless forms.
Descriptions of this kind of contemplation often mention a widening of concern. Instead of awareness feeling like a private possession tucked inside one head, it begins to seem like something held in common, as natural and shared as daylight. Some people speak of a sense of kinship with animals and strangers, or of a quiet steadiness that comes from no longer feeling quite so alone. Others notice nothing dramatic at all, only a little more gentleness in how they regard the life around them.
One misunderstanding is to imagine that this method asks you to feel everything that every being feels. It does not, and attempting to do so would be overwhelming rather than contemplative. Another is to treat the idea as a reason for detachment, as though seeing a shared awareness made individual suffering less real. In the tradition, a sense of common nature is more often associated with care than with indifference. A third misunderstanding is to try to produce a feeling of oneness through effort or imagination; most teachers would say that such a feeling cannot be manufactured.
This method may suit people with a steady practice who are drawn to questions about the nature of mind and to an ethic of kindness towards all life. It is less suitable for anyone who is easily overwhelmed by other people’s distress or by large, abstract ideas, or who has experienced periods in which their sense of self felt dangerously unstable. People with a history of trauma, psychosis, dissociation or serious mental-health conditions should seek suitable support before taking up intense contemplative practice.
Deep dive
Near the end of the Vijñāna Bhairava, several methods open the scope of contemplation as wide as it can go. This one belongs with its neighbours that speak of everything as consciousness and of the awareness present in another person. Where those methods focus on objects or on a single companion, this one includes every living being. Seven Doors places it in the Nondual and Expansive family.
The wider Kashmir Śaiva tradition describes reality as one consciousness that freely expresses itself as many subjects and many objects. Within that picture, the awareness in a bird, a child and an old friend differs in its circumstances and capacities, but not in its essential nature. Teachers who have discussed contemplations of this kind tend to approach them in a few broad ways. Some treat them mainly as a philosophical recognition. Some emphasise their ethical consequences, linking a sense of shared awareness to compassion and non-harm. Others describe a quieter felt sense, in which the boundary between one’s own awareness and the world’s seems less sharply drawn. These are interpretations, and they differ; none of them should be taken as a forecast of what anyone will experience.
It is worth noticing that similar ideas appear in many contemplative and religious traditions, from practices of universal goodwill to teachings about a shared sacred nature. That breadth suggests the theme speaks to something widely felt, but it also means that people bring very different assumptions to it. A method like this can easily become a belief to defend rather than a question to explore.
In historical settings, contemplations of this scope were usually reserved for practitioners who had already spent a long time with more concrete methods, who understood the philosophy behind them and who had a teacher to consult. Practices that dissolve the felt boundaries of the self can be destabilising when approached abruptly or intensely. Some people report a sense that nothing is personal or that their own life feels unreal, and some find themselves flooded with concern for suffering they cannot address. These responses do not mean that a person is doing something right or wrong. They are signals to return to ordinary, grounded activities and, where needed, to seek support.
A modern, careful adaptation would hold the idea of one awareness in all beings lightly and practically. It would favour short, relaxed reflection over prolonged absorption, and would keep strong links to the body, the breath and the immediate surroundings. It would place more weight on simple kindness, towards oneself as well as others, than on unusual experiences. It would make no claims about where such contemplation leads, and it would present the method as one door among many.
In the Seven Doors app, this method is offered only as a short, adapted guided practice built with these cautions in mind, and this page describes it rather than giving step-by-step instructions. Everyday attention to the people and creatures around you, noticing that each is living a life as vivid as your own, is a grounded way to stay close to the theme.
Described, not instructed
Best approached after the foundations, or with a teacher. Described here, not instructed. This page explains the method and its context without step-by-step instructions.
Source text
Verse 100 · The Vijñāna Bhairava, ed. Mukunda Rāma Shāstrī, Kashmir Series of Texts and Studies 8 (1918)
चिद्धर्मा सर्वदेहेषु विशेषो नास्ति कुत्रचित् ।
अतश्च तन्मयं सर्वं भावयन्भवजिज्जनः ॥
ciddharmā sarvadeheṣu viśeṣo nāsti kutracit |
ataśca tanmayaṃ sarvaṃ bhāvayanbhavajijjanaḥ ||
Translation
Consciousness is the nature present in all bodies; nowhere is there any difference. So a person who contemplates everything as made of that overcomes worldly existence.
How the practice adapts it
The verse says the same consciousness is present in all bodies; the practice keeps a wide recognition of awareness in all creatures.
Seven Doors’ own translation from the Sanskrit of the 1918 KSTS text, made and reviewed with AI assistance in two independent passes; the works listed were drawn on for the meaning of hard words, from the AI’s knowledge of them, and were not compared page by page.