Enlightenment in 30 days--email dialogue with Rob

Dear Edji,

Thank you so much for the guidance and wisdom you have written and shared on your website. For 3 years I have been searching for answers and guidance all over the internet to no avail. I was seeking an explanation for an experience I did not understand. I did not know at the time, but I had accidentally stumbled upon this self inquiry process one night in bed. The experience altered my mind forever, and left me terribly confused. I have found no one but you that could explain what had happened to me and what I needed to do.

A week a ago, I began following your instructions detailed in Hunting the I. Since then, I have been able to understand that my body and the world I had always thought existed are an illusion. I am now focused on resting as the witness of consciousness---that which itself appears to not be consciousness---if that makes any sense. I watch the waking state, sleep state (which was very bizarre the first time), and dreaming. Though in the state of deep sleep I do not seem to be watching or at least I don't remember it.

I am not sure what else to do from here except continue to focus on resting as the witness. My understanding seems to grow constantly, but is still not complete.

I never tried meditation before 3 years ago, and I've never had a teacher. After I started self inquiry last week, I began having intense pain in the center of my head and I'm not sure what it is. I can push this point of pain and pressure around my body or completely out of it, but it quickly returns. I'm not sure what to do to make it stop. Any guidance on this would be greatly appreciated.

I am immensely grateful to you, Robert, and Ramana Maharshi for sharing such clear and simple guidance. Before finding you, all I could find were teachings about oneness that I knew were shallow and not the whole truth. I thought of giving up, but something kept driving me to continue my search. I am very glad I kept going.

Gratefully Yours,

Rob

Ed: You are doing very, very well.  Keep it up. No other advice at this time.

Don't pay any attention to the pain, just observe it.

Hello Edji,

Hope you are well. I've been observing like you instructed me to. Yesterday I thought of trying something else, but it dawned on me that anything else I try is useless. Anything I do is just seeking at the level of the mind, so I just gave up and surrendered.

This morning I was rereading your “Hunting the I” and it finally sunk in.

There is no I! No person, no witness...just AMness. Its all just some mental projection. Is this correct? Is there anything I should be doing or practicing now? Is there anything I should avoid that could be problematic at this stage? Thank you for your time.

Rob

Ed:

This itself is a mental conclusion that you have accepted as true.

Find the I am sensation by feeling for it, not looking for it.

Dwell in that I Am sensation. Become intimate with it that leads to a direct experience of the life force. At the same time you become aware that you are witnessing the I Am sensation and later, consciousness.

Read Apte's Nisargadatta Gita and Nisargadatta's The Ultimate Medicine, which I find the clearest exposition of a class of advaita teachings, and the clearest explanation of the best form of self-inquiry.

Listen to sacred music, Kirtan and Bhajans.

These instructions are generic and fit all people.  Some advance quickly by staying in the I Am sensation.

Some find help or clarity of purpose by reading the Nisargadatta Gita that focuses on the one self-inquiry method that I have found to be the most effective method out of many.

Some feel the hammer blow of Nisargadatta’s clearest work, and that is enough to unfoled their spiritual destiny.

Lastly, for those with a devotional bent, and who already can observe within, I say change your direction and “feel” within, allowing many to experience the explosion of the life force, Shakti, from within

Sear Edji:

Yesterday after reading some passages from the Ultimate Medicine, I started to ponder how I had mentally come to the conclusion there was no I. As I was thinking I realized that I was trying to out-think my own thinking....by thinking. And that even this was still a thought.  Then the mind just froze...all thinking, beliefs, and concepts stopped. I didn't trust any of my perceptions and it was a bit terrifying for a moment. I immediately closed my eyes and tried to dwell in the I Am and find some stability, but it was gone! It had been there seconds before, but now it wasn't.

It seemed diffused throughout consciousness, and when I focused on it then it seemed to move...like trying to catch a cloud. Sometimes it will condense and I'll briefly have the I Am appear to be in the elbow, or nose, or in front of the body.  I also discovered I don't have a body. It's a bunch of sensations that appear random without the idea "body.” If I close my eyes, the body seems flat, almost 2 dimensional.  Sometimes it feels like my shoulder is above my ear, or that one leg is half a long as the other. It’s a lot of fun actually. I feel totally at peace, not the overwhelming bliss that I have been experiencing.

I know absolutely I'm not this body

I know I can't be consciousness because that comes and goes

I have read that I am something beyond this, 

but that's a thought and not something I am aware of having experienced.

Nothing seems real anymore...objects, people, this body, or consciousness itself. I'm typing this inside a dream. I don't know if there is a real ME beyond consciousness or not. If there is a real ME then how do I experience it not simply think it? 

Thank You,

Rob

Rob Again:

I answered my own question from yesterday.

I realized it last night, Edji. While going between, waking, sleep, dream, back to waking...I clearly noticed that which is always there. It’s very difficult to describe, but that "me" was always there I was just too distracted by the appearances of consciousness I guess. Now while awake it feels like consciousness is being "pulled" into this real me and identification with it is becoming more powerful. It feels peaceful almost like being half awake and half asleep.

Rob

Ed:

This is difficult to hold onto.  Expect it to come and go for a while.  But essentially you have got it.  It has to deepen and stabilize.

Also, you say,  you had been in bliss. Tell me how that happened.  Are you directly aware of the life force within as a separate entity, as Shakti?

Where you are now, I was 20 years ago.  But seven years ago I totally awakened to Shakti, the life force that lives and acts through our bodies and our deeper Subtle Body.  Until you have had that love affair with Shakti, if you have not already experienced it, I don’t know how stable your realization will be.  Your direct and continuous awareness of the life force is a mark of the spiritual depth necessary for full realization.

From Rob:

The first time it happened was 3 years ago. Without knowing what I did one night I sank back into the witness. It felt like I had energy running through my body, and new sensations everywhere. It felt better than anything I had ever felt before. The next morning it seemed like I could read what people were thinking, so I thought I had gone insane. I didn't like the mind reading and it disappeared a few days later. The bliss feeling slowly went away after a few weeks, and didn't return until a few weeks ago. 

This is all new to me. I have been singlemindedly focused on finding what I truely am and to know what is real and unreal. So, I tried not to focus on the bliss/energy. I thought if I did I would get distracted and lost. Currently, I'll have this sensation that I can only describe at bliss circulate throughout different areas of the body. Sometimes I'll feel very hot like I have a fever, or euphoria 100 times stronger than being intoxicated. 

I know nothing about Shakti. Not intellectually(for whatever good that's worth) nor how to control it or even if that's possible. I would love to know more!

Thank you for your guidance!

Rob

A Path to Awakening Without the Physical Presence of a Guru

I awakened to who I was in 1995 because I was with Robert.

It was not due to his teachings, which appeared to me as disorganized and filled with Hindu folklore, along with his talk of a pervading consciousness and nothingness that did the trick.

It was due to his presence.

People love to read Robert's teachings or listen to his voice because they find it comforting. His teachings comport with other new age teachings and the Vedas and therefore "resonates" with people who read a lot, and they provide the hope of salvation from suffering and pain.

Personally, I don't like the way Robert taught. He spoke of his own experience of the world often, his essential teachings, but he gave far more emphasis to stories and Hindu folklore about karma,reincarnation, the need to destroy the mind and to be  quiet, non-reactive to the world.  That is, he seemed to say, act like him being quiet and non-reactive and awakening will come.

But he never laid out a clear map of passing from body/mind identification, and reaching the understanding that everything was consciousness, and that you are the totality of your experience of consciousness, which he and Ramana called Brahman.

Too many people got lost in a depressive preoccupation with emptiness and quietness which Robert never clearly distinguished from nothingness. Emptiness--space--itself is an observable, part of the nature of consciousness, as is time, while nothingness lacks even these qualities and is beyond consciousness. Preoccupation with emptiness will get you nowhere, while preoccupation with nothingness is an essential quality of sadhana.


People did not awaken around Robert because of his teachings, but because of his presence, his physical presence. In his presence, you "felt" or intuited his experiential state beyond space and time.  The nothingness of which he spoke had a living presence which you could feel.

HOWEVER, there are actual verbal teachings that can help you awaken, other than the most important advice to focus on your own experience. Why Robert did not teach this way, nor Ramana for that matter, I have no idea.  

There is a way of teaching about Robert's world other than his request to imitate him, his silence and nom-reactivity, a way that convinces the mind that its ideas of who and what a human is, and what is real and what is not real, causes a total overthrow of that person's spiritual ignorance and reorients them in consciousness-centeredness as opposed to body-centeredness.

The first step is to realize you are not your body, and the first step here is just to hear that you are not your body. If you are not your body, then what are you? Ponder this question over and over.

Take a close look at your life, your experiences, and you will understand that "you," whatever that is, experience and witness "your" body by means of "your"consciousness. Consciousness is your instrument to observe both your body and the world. This is far different from using your mind to philosophically explore a world of concepts about self, consciousness, and the world.

If you look and feel closely at your experience of your body and the world, you will find somewhere within that totality a sense, or a truth that you exist, that you are.  Sometimes this appears to be an obvious truth not worth stating, but you would be surprised how few people actually feel a sense of existence and a sense of I or I Am. This I Am sense is what gives you a feeling of individuality and the sense that you are alive.

At some point through the practice of attending to your sense of I Am, and through accepting and loving that I Am, expands it into a sense of presence, and at some moment you may explosively experience that I Am as revealing her nature to you in her full glory as the divine Shakti. Shakti arises in you as pure light and spirit, as an explosion of inner energy, bliss, love and a cleansing, purifying grace, and you witness your own essence as Shakti, both divine and human at the same time.

Then for months or years you feel her inside "you" as body, inside "you" as consciousness, as a divine presence, incredibly active and flowing from within and through you into the world. This is realizing yourself as the Manifest Self, as spirit, bliss, consciousness. This was Ramana's awakening and also Robert's.  For some, the experience conveys the truth that there is no me, there is only Shakti.  For others, it is like a partnership between the divine and you as a human, even though those who experience Shakti this way, the partnership is only apparent.  Shakti and you are not two.

This self-realization experience allows you to realize one day that you are not your body, you are consciousness that witnesses your body as one specific and localized "object" within the totality of your awareness, the totality of your manifest consciousness.

You are beginning to enter your freedom from identification with your physical body and move towards identifying with the totality of your consciousness.

But careful observation of that consciousness over the next months or years does something. Eventually even Consciousness no longer appears real. 

Consciousness comes and goes. It alternates between waking, dream, and sleep. Various energies pervade it, alcohol and drugs distort it, and it disappears along with the I Am sensation and your sense of presence in deep sleep.

Consciousness is even less stable and more mortal than your apparent body. It awakens and dies each day at least once. It is fickle, and after a while, even the endless bliss and perceived energies we call Shakti become much like brushing your teeth experiences. Something to be endured even if pleasurable.

And you begin to "see" through consciousness.  It is ever changing, temporal, fickle, and the venue not only for Shakti's play, but also the venue for your experience of discomfort, restlessness, unhappiness, your need to know, and your drive for peace.

All of these things are part of your consciousness, not part of your body, and not part of your mind either, because your mind is experienced and watched in consciousness.  The I Am sensation is in consciousness, mind, suffering, bliss Shakti, your body--all are in and are consciousness, and consciousness is experienced as less and less real.  It begins to appear as a light show, images projected onto a blank space or screen.

But something else is also happening while this is going on.

You have realized you are not your body, and that your body is just experienced in your consciousness, and in all likelihood, consciousness itself has its origin in and through the life of your body. Body creates consciousness, which witnesses and identifies with the body.

You realize that at one time you identified with your body as the entirety of your existence. Then you disidentified with your body, and identified with your consciousness, Shakti, light, energies, bliss and love as your "true" nature. You have had a love affair with the divine, your own consciousness with all of its characteristics and traits.

However, at this time you recognize that you are also the witness of this whole identification/disidentification process. In fact, you are more and more powerfully aware of yourself as the witness standing beyond (or before) both your body and your awareness of self, Shakti, and of the world.

This witness appears to be like a dark void from which the Manifest Consciousness arises each morning. You become aware of yourself as a dark void, a total nothingness that leaps into existence each morning and comes alive. The nothingness which is you comes alive each morning in a new birth when consciousness arises along with the sensation of I Am.

So, you begin to relax into this nothingness, you disappear as body/mind/consciousness into this total nothingness. And, for the first time you recognize that you have come home at last. In this nothingness, no consciousness, no mind, no body, you are in complete peace and happiness being nothing, not thinking, knowing nothing.

At this time you can completely disappear even to yourself in samadhi or into sleep, until once again the world and consciousness emerges from within you as witness for a new birth day. But even when it does emerge, you are aware of the temporality and fickleness of consciousness and realize it is just an appearance, which comes to you who lies entirely and existentially prior to consciousness, untouched by consciousness, and are Unborn.

Body and consciousness--neither are you. You are beyond both. Unborn, not understanding, not knowing, you are entirely beyond existence.

Finally, after long rest in nothingness, you recognize that the reflected consciousness and body are also you, but there is no longer any identification with any of it. Let it do what it wants, what the show wants. While consciousness flickers you still live as a human, nut when it goes, you are untouched.

You think you exist as a body/mind, relatively stably through time. Yet every night your body, mind and consciousness disappear for a few hours, until the waking state returns the next day. In that waking state you remember that you slept, and that you existed the day before. So your "stability" in existence is purely memory in the waking state, which comes and goes, comes and goes.

Identification with your body seems to make sense because then you have an apparently stable existence as a body that lasts 40, 60, 90 years, even though "you" exist for only a few hours each day as the waking state, within which is memory that ties all the waking state experiences together.

This waking state is not even the body, but an appearance that comes to you, and which disappears each evening.

In other words, as an analogy--Nisargadatta's analogy--you are like the flame of a cigarette lighter, that goes on and off all day, all week and month long. The flame, feeling its temporality, identifies with the lighter to gain some endurance and weight, but the lighter does not exist for the flame when the flame is not there. The flame just assumes the lighter was existent when it , itself, was not.

Is this not how we are, a flame during the waking moments that identifies with the body, and both of which disappear with sleep and death?

Just be aware of the flame or consciousness. Immerse in it. Be it. This is true self-inquiry.

Our bodies are merely vehicles for consciousness, which we are.

The body provides the five senses, mind, the inner senses of emptiness, light, space, emotions, hunger, pain, pleasure which consciousness experiences. Pure consciousness, purified by meditation, is just and only love of being, of existence, of ourselves and of others.

Consciousness arises out of the body brought alive by the life force, which you can directly experience by immersing yourself in the experience of the I Am sensation, one's own sense of presence, w3hich grows and expands with meditation on one's self.

Consciousness experiences our bodies and experiences through our bodies. The world is just another appearance within consciousness.

I feel a sense of personal, not of the my body, but my experience of I, which when experienced completely, is everywhere in consciousness.

Now the question arises, is consciousness self-contained, or is it dependent on something in you that is deeper? This you need to ponder.

There are three countries in Europe who have a lot of people following me and also viewing my blog: The Netherlands, Switzerland, and the United Kingdom.

If anyone wants to set up a retreat in any or all of these three countries, I am open to accept.

Not one out of a million can understand what I am saying now. The others, the 99.999% have not done the inner work necessary to have the experiences that unpack their experience of the world, their bodies, and consciousness enough to better aperceive the nature of consciousness.

However, last night I received feedback from Pradeep Apte who wrote the Nisargadatta Gita and other books confirming this stated understanding of the sequencing of spiritual experience.

"Dear Ed,

Thanks for this enlightening piece. You have summed it up all in a very precise and clear way. I would only add a small bit at the end:
Now you are entirely free without knowing.
Love"

Pradeep

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.

So many spiritual seekers equate spirituality with reading about spirituality. Read Ramakrishna, Ramana, the Vedas, Krishnamurti, and learn the concepts.

Maybe 20% of these actually try a practice such as self-inquiry, Chakra Yoga, just sitting meditation. Some practice for a year, some for ten, some for 40.

But then there are those rare ones who just throw themselves into a practice, such as self-inquiry, or better, abiding in one's own self. This is real spirituality.

Here is an email from one such person who just threw herself into practice:

Dear Edji, Namasakar to you,

The sinking continues and it's bringing different aromas:) some times it' bliss, then it's ecstasy then it's total silence and peace. The change is that during all these I was restricting myself as a witness. Then suddenly I started to experience this pull from my gut like I am literally in a labor pain .. Then I was not a observer anymore but I started to feel the sensations.. It was like my false I was holding me back from experiencing ..now I am in the centre allowing all these sensations washing through me..of course the enquiry continues of who is experiencing even all this? Even though there is no answer I sense a presence, a mute witness or stillness in the background.

In waking state the emotions are still going on and I am ever ready for them to come and when they leave I can't help but smile ..and I know that they will be back again. Now I am more open to them. There is no background talk of I should have done this or that..because now it's just the show continues for whatever the script is there ...

Sometimes mind does catch me and I let it hold me for sometime and it leaves me back to my space:)) the happiness I experience is so different from the happiness I experience from material world... The strong faith and trust towards the energy or God which/who is doing all this and there is no doer inside me who wants to claim .. But when negative emotions arises I have to hold on to that trust strongly because the pull towards the other side is strong too..and to let go of those fears is very liberating. Old thought patterns are recognised the moment it arises and it goes to the empty space from where it came..
Edji, I also wanted to tell you that I downloaded the collective works of Robert Adams talks..I am reading few pages everyday and I share it with my husband . I felt Robert in those pages ..it's like I am part of those talks ..and he is cooking me too..:)) thank you for every thing .. may your guidance continue to take me in the path...

Taking your blessings ..

REALIZATON THAT WE ARE CONSCIOUSNESS ITSELF, NOT A BODY/MIND OBJECT THAT TAKES ITSELF AS SUBJECT

Discovering and owning that we are not a body/mind object in space and time, immersed in a three dimensional world with billions of other apparent human objects, and trillions of other sentient beings, makes for astounding change in everything about us.

When we think we are a body/mind, we immediately arose a fear of death because we identify with an objective entity.

But when we identify the consciousness, our bodies and minds become objects within our consciousness, and as such, only consciousness themselves.  Our bodies and our minds are observed within our consciousness, and themselves are consciousness.

That is, when we have a dream, it takes place within our sense of self as a dreamer.  But when we wake up, the world, our bodies, our minds, and our sense of existing and being alive arise in exactly the same way as does our dream world and dream bodies. They are all part of our sense of being.  In that sense, we are waking dream creators of the vast world around us as well as of our bodies and minds which appear added onto our existence in our consciousness.

The awakening exercise becomes much easier once you become more accustomed to looking and feeling inside your skin rather than outside into the complexities and activities of your world.

All of Robert's exercise and talks were aimed at only one thing: to get people to turn their attention inwards away from the world.

One you become accustomed to constantly being away of your body, emotions, thoughts, your sense of presence, the inner energy flows, the inner space, then the awakening exercise becomes so easy and so very powerful.

THE AWAKENING EXERCISE

So many spiritual paths are very effortful. Chakra Yoga, Kriya Yoga, Patanjali You, Kundalini Yoga, and even Bhakta Yoga with all its sturm and drang of weeping, pining, lonEliness, followed by relief an great happiness.

Robert's spirituality is not really effortful at all: just immerse yourself into the totality of your experience as consciousness and lose your identity as body mind, thereby becoming the Manifest Self, Brahman.

There is one simple but incredibly powerful exercise that helps you realize this new identity as consciousness itself instead of your body mind.  Robert mentions it all the time in his talks but I will expand upon it a bit.

This exercise will not work if you wake up five minutes before you have to be up by means of an alarm clock. 

There can be no alarm clock used because it tends to stun you into awakening.

When you awakening in the morning, be aware of the process.  What happens and in what order?
For most, at first there is awareness of the world, then the mind awakens too, and at that moment you realize that you are, that you exist and the world exists separately from you.

But try this.  Instead of getting up, stay in the sleepy state as long as you can, and try to watch yourself go back to sleep reentering nothingness.  When you come awake again, watch the process of the arising of consciousness in you. 

Practice this for several months and the process of the arising of consciousness in you will slow down and you can watch every detail.

You begin to see the beginning of the awakening process where an inner light arises within the dark, moist, and very peaceful emptiness within, arising from your gut and flowing upwards into the brain. Once it hits your brain, your ordinary consciousness and mind appear.

But this has to be noted. YOU have witnessed the arising of consciousness arising out of your original state of that dark, most, and all-comfortable emptiness. You are witnessing the experience of beingness before consciousness and mind arises into the waking state, which makes you realize that consciousness comes to you.  You already are prior to the arising of consciousness.  You witness its arising, and after it arises, your body, your sense of existence, and the world all arise simultaneously.

This marks the totality of your Manifest consciousness, your Manifest Self, Brahman, and you are that.

You are aware of your body.  You are aware of the world. 

You are aware of space, both inner and outer, and you are aware of your own presence, your own existence, your I Am simultaneously. All are experienced as objects within you as the totality of consciousness.

Yet all of this Manifest Brahman has rising out of that rich, moist, darkness, that nothingness which is you before the arising of consciousness.

In meditation too, we go to the same place of nothningness, but in meditation, the nothingness is not dark.  It is indescribable because you go to a place where the mind does not exist, and thus this place has no characteristics, no form or name, no description.

How much simpler and effortless can spirituality be?  No huffing and puffing, no full Lotus, no visualizations, or guiding prana, no reading of the Vedas or Gitas. Just watching and being your self. It is all on you. 

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.

THE TOTALITY OF CONSCIOUSNESS

Once you have located your sense of I Am-ness as a separate entity within your heart area, you immediately perceive that it is a different kind of experience than your experience of your body or mind. Focusing on that I Amness sensation causes you to begin to feel a global sense of presence with and around your physical body.

This presence is sometimes referred to as the Subtle Body. It is experiencing yourself something like an energy being, a cloud of awareness permeating your body and the world.
Focusing on the experience of your Subtle Body, your sense of presence, you know you are not just your physical body anymore. You are also something else entirely: consciousness itself.

Not only are you feeling your body from the inside, but you are also something more subtle, an energetic being that seems to permeate the body as a separate entity, and also extends beyond the body. That I Am sensation is the same as your feeling of your growing sense of presence.

At this point you are able to "step back" in a sense, and watch the totality of your experience of your body, your presence, and the world as a total experience, as if you were enwrapped by and permeated by consciousness itself. Your consciousness is self-contained, you are aware of the totality of your consciousness. 

This consciousness feels more pure than the body and at first it feels like you have been filled by the divine, by grace, by purity.

At this point you understand consciousness in an entirely different way. The world and your body do not seem so concrete and permanent as when you only considered yourself as a body with a mind. They become merely appearances in you as consciousness.

Consciousness then appears to be ever so changeable and flowing from waking to dream, to deep sleep, as well as being altered by medications, alcohol, hallucinogens such as LSD and Marijuana, etc. Consciousness is not fixed nor any object in it. Thus the whole world begins to be experienced as illusory, temporary and flowing compared to how you felt it to be real and solid becoming aware of the I Am sensation. 

The waking world begins to be perceived in a way similar to how you experience your dream worlds: as temporary images, which at Robert called optical illusions. The only "reality" appears to be the totality of consciousness, its total manifestation, and it and you no longer seem so real.

This is not the final step.

The final step Robert saves for last, and I won't take you there now.