Self-Knowledge and Self-Realization

RECOGNIZING YOUR SELF AS PRIOR TO CONSCIOUSNESS

Many times now I have brought you to the place of identifying with the I Am sensation. Finding the I Am sensation, accepting it aND loving it. Eventually the I Am grows into a great sense of "presence," like a new energy body that pervades one's body sensation and extends into the world.

Then you learn to love that I Am sensation and the extruded sense of presence, and joyfully you run around loudly saying "I exist," or "I have come alive; from emptiness I have come alive!" Around this time you have happen to you something like Robert';s awakening experience, where there awakens in you an explosion of light, bliss, and infinite energy arising from somewhere within, and exploding upwards into the brain and beyond into the world. You become aware of infinite bliss, light and energy that pervades your body, your sense of presence, and the world.

This is becoming Brahman, becoming one with consciousness and feeling the endless movements of internal energies, the life force. It is at this point, if it is to happen, that you may develope siddhis, or powers such as of healing, telepathy, knowing the future, astral projection, etc., and for a long while you will dwell in these energies, light, bliss, and love.

But something tugs at you. The presence of the witness.

Once you become aware of the I Am sensation, accept it and abide in it, and lastly identify with it as your Manifest Self, you are also simultaneously aware of a witness watching the whole process. You may try to observe this witness, but it evades you.

Instead, do as Rajiv Kapur did and fall backwards into the witness-sense. Rather than observe the witness, become the witness and fall backwards into that dark background ehind you, thereby becoming the witness.

What happens then?

When you even begin to do this you recognize that the I Am, your body, and your experience of the world are all simultaneously perceptions by you, the witness. You, by becoming the witness are simultaneously aware of your body experience, your sense of I Am, your sense of presence, and the world. The entirety of your consciousness is now set before you as an object. You are no longer just the body, no longer just the I Am sensation, no longer just your mind, no longer just the world, yet all are observed by you.

At this point you are likely to identify with that totality of manifest consciousness, recognizing that the totality is you, Brahman.

Robert Adams states it thus:

"I know there are many of you who like to go hiking, like to climb Mountains, like to become part of nature. That’s OK, but do not believe that these things are external from yourself. These things are yourself. You are That. When you question, “To whom does this come?” you again realize, “It comes to me, I perceive it.” Then you remember that you are not I. “I” perceives it. Yet in reality, you are not the perceiver. You are not the witness. “I” perceives it. “I” is the witness. This is a very important point, and I want you to understand it because it can change your whole life. Whatever you see in the world, you are to realize that “I” perceives. But do not look at I as being the self. You have to catch yourself and say, “I” perceives. This does not mean that you perceive it. It is “I” that perceives it. When you separate yourself from the I, all is what? Consciousness. It is only when you believe that you are I, that your humanhood comes into play. But as soon as you perceive that I is the universe, you have separated yourself from I. And then Consciousness comes into play, you have awakened. In other words, when you can separate from your I, you will be awakened and liberated."

However magnificent this experience is, this knowledge is, it is still not the end, for you begin to feel that this totality of consciousness is not you. You, the background principle are observing it, witnessing the totality of consciousness, but yourself not part of it. You, as witness are not part of the Manifest Self or the Manifest Universe.

In this state you realize that you are beyond consciousness, you are prior to consciousness, and therefore prior to birth and death, prior to existence as consciousness and non-existence of non-consciousness. You are the unborn principle from which consciousness springs and creates everything.