Self-Knowledge and Self-Realization

Pierre Thériault: Many out there say that enlightenment is not about experiences. And many say it is much more a dismantling of the old, than a transformation into something new. Please feel free to write a lot about what you call the manifest, and thanks for sharing those letters with us.

Edward Muzika: Pierre Thériault Experiences and knowing go hand in hand. But it is not a conceptual knowing. It is knowing that all so-called conceptual knowledge and ideas, including about one's own identities, are all add-ons to the fundamental feeling of being alive and existing.

When you abide in that original knowing, directly perceiving/feeling one's own self, resting there for a long bit, extraordinary experiences come along with a direct perceiving without the intermediary of mind or concepts.

With the subsidance of mentation, of mind, one then operates directly as a manifestation of universal consciousness. But even that is a concept and serves no one. Just trust to find oneself, and abide there, baking in that oven of self abidance until you are thoroughly cooked, or as Robert Adams said, you have become a hollow shel of your former existence.

As for extraordinary experiences, I post letters from students and others about their experiences mostly to inspire others to maintain or increase their intention and persistence towards abiding in the I Am sense, which becomes a recognition and abidance in Self.