Self-Knowledge and Self-Realization

COMMENT TO ME SENT BY A READER, VIOLET CRYSTAL:

Hello Edward and all. I have a question based on this excerpt from something Robert Adams said in one of his talks:

"We're talking about the ineffable. Something beyond words and thoughts. Something beyond, something beyond. Yet it's so beautiful that there is nothing to say. There is something there when you go beyond consciousness, beyond beingness, beyond pure awareness but yet it's not something at all. For when you think of something you're thinking of a thing. A thing that you can think about. 

"Something that you can feel perhaps.Something that you can identify with. It is beyond all that. There can be absolutely nothing that can be said about it. You can't even experience it. For to experience it there must not be a you. The you has to be transcended, transmuted. 

"Therefore you can never experience this ineffable. And when the you is gone and no longer is there, there is no longer an experience. For again there has to be a you to experience something. When the you is gone who is to experience anything? The experiencer as been totally transcended and the experience has been totally transcended. You are that!"

Is all this pointing to the state of deep sleep and/or death (which I understand to be the same thing)? Everything Robert is talking about can be said of the state of deep sleep which is something every one of us goes through every night.

ED’S REPLY:

Violet Crystal WHERE DID YOU FIND THIS ROBERT QUOTE? IT IS A PERFECT DESCRIPTION OF THE HIGHEST TEACHINGS!

It is not a state of deep sleep or death, but beyond both, and also beyond the conscious, awake mind.

To know it, you have to catch yourself just awakening out of sleep, or just going into sleep.

At that point you can become aware that you are separate from the awake state and the sleep state, and the dream state.

You only are aware that you have nothing to do with consciousness. This is an understanding reached by the mind which only operates in the awake and dream states, which, of course, disappears both in deep sleep and death.  But combining the experience with the understanding of That which lies beyond consciousness is your truest or deepest identity, is your opening to final enlightenment.

THEN, SOMETIMES YOU'LL GET BROUGHT TO THIS AWARENESS SPONTANEOUSLY.

IT CAN BE LIKE THIS: You will feel very relaxed and in peace. Then is feels like you are falling backwards into yourself, which “feels like” a dark, quiet, and juicy presence within. Slowly you will sink into that nothingness, with awareness of the world, and even awareness of awareness diminishing. Yet each "inch" of falling backwards into that Nothingness is accompanied by ever-increasing peace. Eventually you "return: to complete Nothingness, and nothing is experienced except the complete peace of being complete and self-contained, needing nothing, wanting nothing.

There are other ways to experience this "Absolute Witness" without anything being witnessed, except a sense of complete rest and needing nothing. This is deeper than the causal body state, or even Turiya.

This is the entirely beyond to the other shore, beyond life and death of the Buddhist Heart Sutra. Gute, Gute, Paragute, Parasumgute, Bodhi Svaha!

Going into this state of being beyond, complete, and in divine peace frequently, and understanding this as your deepest self completely, solidly, and stably, is the final enlightenment.  From this place you find complete peace even while living immersed in the world, loving and worshipping the life force as Shakti.