WHAT IF....

Walk with me for a moment.  Think of this as a thought experiment.

What if instead of being a human body where consciousness awakens each morning to reveal the world and also our bodies, and wherein the mind also comes awake creating your personal world and your identity with your body and mind, that you instead consider yourself to be consciousness itself and not the body/mind object it perceives?

Do you understand the significance of this revolutionary overturning of concepts?

You are consciousness itself.  The body, the world, and even your own sense of existence, of presence, becomes only an appearance in consciousness.  The world arises within you.  Out of the dark, moist emptiness of nothingness, you as consciousness arise, and the world and your associated body arise within you.

This is the POV that Robert wants you to take, and also Ramana.  Consciousness is first, the appearances within it are secondary.

When experienced in this way, one’s attention becomes fixed on consciousness itself and its vagaries, and with this change in orientation, consciousness begins to change too.

You begin to experience/perceive/understand that consciousness flows out of the dark nothingness that is you like light out of a lighthouse or projector.  You can “feel” it emitting from you.  You begin to experience the energies that seem to circulate within your body and your sense of presence.  Your sense of presence, your experience of your own existence, expands and becomes more powerful.  

The life force in you becomes more clearly manifest.  You experience bliss and great joy. Light and energy pour out of you into the apparent external world.  You feel totally alive and also totally vulnerable because your apparent body has become totally alive, and nothing within is repressed because nothing within or without frightens you anymore.  No need to hide feelings or vulnerabilities.  

That sense of vulnerability brings you alive as never before. Your love and compassion also expand and you perceive that life force within that has so many names, Shakti, Ma Kali, Kundalini, Chi, is experience as God, as the Other who is also you. The life force dwells within and lives through you.  God finds expression through you.

But then things begin to change again.  The waking and sleep processes slow down. The morning awakening which used to be instantaneous now seems to take minutes.  You see/perceive consciousness arising within the darkness that is you in the morning.  You perceive “you” as consciousness arising out of the “you” of dark nothingness, and you realize then that you as consciousness have been aware of the deep sleep state for many hours.  This discovery only happens after the mind awakens and makes that discovery as a memory.

Now you fully understand consciousness’s three states of waking, dream, and deep sleep.  And within the waking and dream states the sense of I, or I Am arises along with the mind.

Consciousness now begins to change again.  Now you are not so much interested in the bliss and energy of the life force, your manifest destiny so to speak, but now your interest is on consciousness itself.

What is it?  What is its origin?

And with this attitude change, your intensity of self-investigation and self-abidance increases.  

Now you swim in consciousness and your identification with your body and even your sense of I Am-ness weakens, and your attention turns to the question, “Who or what observes all this?”  Who is it that has moved from perceiving one’s own self as a body/mind, and then moved to identify with the life force, Shakti, then moved to identifying with the totality of your manifest consciousness as nothingness, dream, and the body/world?

Consciousness no longer seems so real.  It flickers and changes and with it the objects within consciousness flicker and change.  Your concern with your body is passing away because you no longer identify with it.  It has become just another appearance in you as consciousness which has arisen out of nothingness.  As such, everything takes on the character of nothingness, no longer of a hard and sometimes brutal external world. 

Consciousness itself becomes less bright, less solid, less “present,” and your POV shifts backwards more towards the witness of this show, this totality of the manifest consciousness, and with it, you begin to feel the warm embrace and utter peace of nothingness, and thereby you begin to transcend death, for you now know that the body and your identity as a human are just appearances within your as consciousness, and consciousness itself is just an appearance arising out of a dark void.

You no longer have any identity.  You no longer know who or what you are for you have entirely transcended the human condition and your identification with your body.  You know that when “your” body dies, you as consciousness do not die, for consciousness is everywhere and exists in all things.  Only its manifestation through you as a body ceases, but you no longer identify with either your body or with consciousness.  You are that from which both have arisen, and the peace is utter and complete.

It is this identity, or lack of it, that Robert and Ramana call Consciousness with a capital C, and Nisargadatta calls the Witness, Parabrahman (before or transcending the manifest consciousness), or the Absolute.  Now you are entirely free.