SPIRITUALITY AND AWAKENING IN A NUTSHELL- PART 3: LOVE

In the previous two sections I presented a thumb nail sketch of the Siddharameshwar approach which is almost exactly the way by which I had my first two awakenings: To unity Consciousness, and then to a recognition that me as Witness had nothing to do with Consciousness, just as the body has nothing to do with the Witness, and which itself is insentient.  Consciousness brings awareness of the body and what the body experiences through the senses to the Witness, Parabrahman.

At first you say, now I realize I am not the body, because I can witness it as an experience.  I can also witness Consciousness and emptiness as experience. And, from this point of view, neither Consciousness nor the body is me, although the sense of I-Am is an essential element of Consciousness, and it is that which I am looking for.  It is through that door that I find both the I-Am, and the witness, AKA the subject, the Absolute, Parabrahman.

However, at this point I may feel as if I know everything, except I do not know the deeper levels of my individual manifestation of Consciousness.  I do not yet know the coming and going of states of Consciousness as a direct experience.  That is, sleep, dream and waking have been coming and going all my life, but I have not seen the transition, and therefore I do not yet know I am not touched by any state of Consciousness. Nor have I discovered the root core of Consciousness, the character of Turiya of Satchitananda, existence-knowledge-bliss, also called the love/bliss body.

Now supposedly the Absolute, the subject or witness is unchanging; it is experience that changes, the world changes, my body and mind change, and Consciousness is ever-flowing, never the same from moment to moment. But the Witness is beyond Consciousness and when we witness body and mind, though we may feel states of pain, age-related diseases, anxiety or depression, when we quietly observe them, we do so from a “place” outside of existence and spacetime.  When we observe from the Witness, subjectively we feel timeless, or spaceless, and as ageless.

That is we cannot know the Witness as an object, because it is really the subject, or witness of all phenomena but is itself not a phenomena or thing.  But we ARE the witness fundamentally, and are always aware of our Witness status at a deep level.  It is just that our search of self-discovery makes us consciously aware that we ARE the Witness already, and in that place of being the Witness, there is no space, no time, no change and we “feel” it intuitively.  It is this fundamental state that Rajiv Kapur discovered three years ago as we dialogued.

Let me give you an example.  I just visited my mother in Arizona.  She is 96 years old and in fairly good health. She said, “But I don’t feel 96.”  I asked her how old she felt, and she paused.  She seemed to go inside to feel how old she was.  She said, “Maybe 40.”  We go through this same conversation every time I visit her. Usually she says she feels the same as when she was 18.

I have never felt any older than maybe 15 at any time in my life.  My body may appear to change and age, but I always feel about the same age, whether the body and mind were 18, 40 or 70.  The things I am and was interested in have changed, but I can’t remember my ground-state of awareness as ever having felt different.

Though the body and consciousness change, that basic awareness FROM the witness always feels about the same.  As we “descend” into more basic or “deeper’ levels of Consciousness, the better we usually feel as we approach the most subtle states, like Turiya, but the Witness still is not touched unless IT allows for an identification.

The whole spiritual process involves going within and watching/feeling the various levels, states and phenomena of Consciousness. One discoveries many mysteries and levels inside, including the coming and going of the four states of waking, sleep, and dream, as well as the secrets of the Subtle Body, Causal Body, and Turiya.

What we find is that we have identified or can identify with the various experiences and “feeling” of different aspects of Consciousness or even the Witness.  Self-discovery involves a sequence of discovery, identification, and then disidentification as we move to different levels of Consciousness.

Almost none of the popular current teachers talk about this.  They talk about finding various levels of “conditionings” or conceptual understandings, or “stories” of who we are that are to be let go of to come to beingness in the Now.  This is NOT what Siddharameshwar, Nisargadatta, or I teach.  We talk about various states of Consciousness, awareness and the Witness apart from stories or concepts or philosophies concerning what we are.  Seeing through concepts, conditionings, and stories is still working at the level of mind, memory, and imaging.  It still is only inch-deep into one’s Consciousness.

As we follow the sense of “I-Am” back to its source in Turiya, usually the happier, more blissful we feel, and sometimes more loving. Here we must be single-minded; we only attend to the sense of I Am in order to find its origin.  We do not get too attached to Subtle Body experiences, or ones disappearance in the Causal Body.  We want to get to a pure experience of I Am in the root state, Turiya.

Indians divide the world into spirit and matter, Purusa and Prakritika.  But they also speak of a division between the unmanifest Witness, or Shiva, which is masculine, and the energy of the Life Force, which is feminine, and which is called Shakti. Shiva is unmoving, the Subject and supporter of all experience and supporter of the universe, while Shakti is the dynamic force, energy, which sets everything in motion.

If you practice self-abidance or self-inquiry, and it becomes routine, one can easily get lost by looking for the I Am in the experience of emptiness. One gets hypnotized by looking into the Void.

Robert Adams and sometimes Ramana tell students to practice self-inquiry by looking for the source of the I-thought, but the I-thought is of the mind, and when one focuses on the source of the thought, one does not find the I-Am feeling, or even the seeker or looker, or the witness.  One just gets lost looking deeper and deeper into emptiness for a place where the I-thought arises.

True self-inquiry requires that we focus on the I-Am sensation which takes us to the most subtle and foundational level of Consciousness known as Turiya or Krishna Consciousness.

The essence of that experience is of blissful energies, joy, pure Shakti in the form of pure energy and light which lights up both the internal Emptiness and the external world.

However, it is here too that we find love in its purest form, whether that love is for an object in awareness, or it is love of the Self, that is Consciousness manifest as Turiya.

The deeper one sinks into one’s Consciousness, the more compellingly is one grabbed by one’s own Self.  One becomes fixated on the I Am.  One is enthralled by oneself and stares at the I-Am, while the I Am beguiles you.

Ramana said that once he perceived the Self, it grabbed his attention and he never let go. He could not take his eyes or heart off of his sense of existence. That is, he identified with Turiya, Satchitananda, the love/bliss body, not Nisargadatta’s Witness.

The best way never to get lost in the Void while looking for the I Am, is not to just look for it, but to feel for it in one’s heart and chest. While searching for the I Am and while abiding there, also LOVE the I Am, open your heart to the I Am, to one’s sense of existence. Make it a deliberate effort of lovingness.

Play with the I Am sensation. Love it.  Wonder what it was like if you could get closer.  Invite it into your core, which is really into the Witness by means of the searching mind: deliberately love the I Am, accept the I Am, invite it to get closer to your heart, wonder about it.  Keep the search juicy, not like a dry analytic investigation.  This keeps the effort from stalling and dying.

One ought to read Nisargadatta’s Self-Knowledge and Self-Realization because at the beginning of his search, he was a true Bhakta, loving and trusting his guru, and lovingly nursing the I Am into life by fawning attention.


The Self, as the manifest Life Force, is attracted to love in any form.  If you can love and devote yourself to your guru, you are much ahead, but still the path is filled with drama.

In my case I fell in love with a woman who also loved me, and we began an amazing transformation into Self-Realization purely because of the intensity of our love for each other. Our love was of such an intensity we could not take our eyes off of the love within us, until we recognized the love was us.  We were Love, and that love was us, our fundamental relational feeling.

Love is essential to preventing one from getting lost in the Void, and is essential if one is to have a self-realization experience as an identification with Turiya, the love/bliss body.  Without love, you can miss Turiya altogether and just be “taken” by the witness.

Now those who are taken by the witness, and become identified with Parabrahamn, are many, and their path is not complete until they can identify with Turiya, with Shakti, and action in the world.


Also, it is possible to be so taken with the love and joy of Turiya that the path is also not completed, because they never identify with the Witness, Parabrahman. You have to spend time identifying with both.

But in the end, I agree with Pradeep Apte, in the end there is no longer any felt separation between witness and the witnessed. They are one. The rift between I Am or personal sense of Self, and the impersonal Witness disappears.

There is an explosive recognition of the identity of the Witness beyond Consciousness, with the Satchitananda, of Turiya, of the I Am.  This is what I call true Self-Realization because the personal sense of I Am, of love, bliss, and energy permanently pervades all my experience.