Self-Knowledge and Self-Realization

Be always mindful of this:

You never really experience the external world.  You experience your consciousness’s representation of that external world.  In fact, the external world may not exist, and you would not know any better if your consciousness were to continue to inform you about a nonexistent external world.

Consciousness itself, at least in your case as an individual entity, is not immortal, it does not remain in any way after the death of the body, such as found in the concept of an immortal soul.  What you are really, is even beyond the concept of an immortal soul, but realizing this deep mystery is difficult indeed.

After you have learned how to detach yourself from your body, having lost identification with the body as you, you then begin to live for a period of time identified with consciousness itself.  By that I mean with your own sense of presence, the so-called energetic body associated with your human physical body, as well as all the objects that arise in your consciousness which you consider to be either yourself or the external world.  All of that is a happening or appearance in your consciousness, which itself is just a temporary bubble containing all of your universe, from the experience of your little toe, to all your thoughts, to all your emotions, to the entire external universe you appear to be part of.  All of this occurs in your consciousness, and consciousness begins to reveal all of its mysteries to you once you can grasp all of her at once, as separate from you.

Now consciousness itself, just like the physical universe that appears within your consciousness, and its individual manifestations are impermanent, but the totality of consciousness, the totality of living sentient beings from mosquitoes and worms to humans, to angels and to God, the entire manifest universe may appear to be infinite, and it may appear that you partake of that infinity by being part of the manifest consciousness, but all of it, even the totality, is time-limited.  Just like the physical universe began, so will it end; and the same is true for the totality of consciousness.  One day from nothingness it appeared, just like one day out of nothingness you came into being, and gradually developed a sense of self.  And one day it will end.

This sense of self may seem very solid and real to you.  Your personality may feel solid and real.  Your experience of your own existence may seem very powerful, solid and real, and the external world itself may appear to be very solid and real, but all it is, is your consciousness, and in a sense, your creation because even though you do not direct the show, you are the single audience for that show, and the whole thing belongs to you in that way.  It is your show only.

I know that there are teachers that teach that since you are the audience, and the only audience for what your consciousness presents to you, as that only audience, you can be considered the creator of all that is seen and experienced, even though you as an individual do not appear to have any control over the events that you see.  These teachers state that you can become the creator, the director, of the show that you call the totality of you in the external world.  They state that you can through different techniques, such as directed “intention,” energy or phase matching and manipulation, through using techniques that raise your “energy” state, can allow you to create an alternative universe from the one you were in before you began to take control of your own destiny.  There are many New Age teachers around like this who talk about mastering your destiny, fully realizing your divine potential, etc.

This concept of empowerment may or may not be true to a limited extent, the creation of alternative worlds through various types of mental or energy manipulation within your bubble of consciousness, but my teacher, Robert Adams, certainly did not recommend any of this New Age creationism, nor did my second guru, Nisargadatta Maharaj through Jean Dunn, my second  worldly teacher.

The best that you can do, the most sublime thing you can do, is to realize that you, as the audience for consciousness, are not consciousness, and are not the physical body within the imaginary external world created by your consciousness.  What you are is total freedom from that consciousness, and the trials and tribulations that that consciousness presents to you as its one and only audience within your consciousness bubble.

You become aware that you are not consciousness, nor the stories created by consciousness.  You just watch consciousness.  You just watch your emotions.  You just watch your thoughts.  But most of us imaginatively embrace that what we see as real is more than merely moving images, sights and sounds within our bubble of consciousness, which we give life, which we give reality, and which we give a storyline.  Yes, we can invent a different story line to explain and explore where we are within consciousness and as consciousness.  Psychologists call this “reframing.”  That is, we change the storyline of thinking about ourselves, from being a victim, to being a victor, from being a pawn, to being King.  But this is all within the new storyline we create, which means you still are entirely identified with elements within your bubble of consciousness and merely changed the imagined relationships between the appearances in your bubble of purported reality.

Robert Adams and Nisargadatta both invited you to go deeper into yourself, into your consciousness, into the source of consciousness, and much deeper entirely into yourself as that which is beyond consciousness and which has no name, no existence, no affect, no existence, yet is there in some unimaginable way apart from existence or beyond or before existence.

Robert Adams rarely spoke of getting prior to consciousness, because he thought that most people would never understand or agree to this as a spiritual way.  He did a few times, but was very guarded in his statement of this theme.  Instead he mostly talked about you as being the infinite, the eternal, Brahman who had many characteristics of transcendence.  But more often, he talked of nothingness, nothingness which was beyond even the void and emptiness, but is hard to imagine because we merely try to magnify any experiences of the void or emptiness into a bigger emptiness or a bigger void.  But by nothingness, Robert meant the absence of anything including the void or emptiness, which is which the advanced meditator always experiences about himself or herself, which is the emptiness that pervades all of consciousness, all appearances within consciousness, all sights, all sounds, all tastes, all touching, all smell—all are permeated by emptiness or the Void as experiences.  The Void pervades and also contains all objects or mind, the mind itself, and objects of the senses.

Robert and Nisargadatta both thought only about the ultimate peace, the peace beyond any understanding, so deep that your soul, your body, your mind, even your Void finds complete rest in being self-contained, and no longer needing or desiring anything from the so-called external world.  You are complete.  No desires race and rage through you.  You do not wish to change the world.  You do not wish to get anything from the external world anymore.  You take whatever comes to you as yours and yours alone, to deal with it as yours alone.

Robert and Nisargadatta were both Princes of Peace.  They taught avoidance of involvement in the external world dream, that nothing there is of import to the ultimate you.  You, the witness of all this, are entirely separate from the dreams produced by your consciousness.  You are entirely separate from consciousness itself.  Robert would say you are Brahman the creator and destroyer of the world, while Nisargadatta would say that the true you, the deepest you, is entirely beyond the body and the physical world, and is also beyond the consciousness that is your instrument for experiencing your body and the external world, and you have nothing to do with it, with the instrument, nor with the external world viewed by you.

Robert and Nisargadatta both would say that any alternative storyline created by you, may provide you an imaginary life of higher actualization and fulfillment, but you are still caught within a different story line that is just as mortal and temporary as the one you left.  In addition, you have spent a lot of energy, a lot of time, a lot of effort in creating this new fulfillment that really does not help you escape the Play of Consciousness. You have just built a different role within that play by a new identification and shifting the storyline.  Your only real hope for peace is by escaping all storylines and all identifications with appearances within consciousness, with the body, and with consciousness itself, escape from the totality of consciousness itself to recognizing and being your true self, which is beyond consciousness.

This can sound negative, this Netti, Netti, point of view meaning not this, not this, which means I am not this, I am not that, gradually losing identification with everything until you have no identification left.  It sounds negativistic, it sounds escapist, but only when put in this context or the storyline of a renunciation, renouncing identification with his body, with his family, with the earth, and with consciousness.  But in actionality, what really happens is the gradual decent of an ever deepening peace, an ever widening piece that wipes out your anxieties, desires, and even your storyline, the one you are living, as well as any you might create.  All fall away, leaving you in a deep peace.

However, there is a great potential danger awaiting that potential sage who desires to go beyond his or her own consciousness, and that is the tendency to dry out and get lost somewhere in the Void, as did I for a long period of time.  The solution to this drying out is to first having discovered the greatness of love, and how having love for everything in your heart, including yourself, is a safeguard from the potential Jnani drying out.  At some point, the aspiring Jnani, the aspiring sage, must become a lover of the world and the object therein, and even after attaining freedom from the known, from the world, from his or her own personality and consciousness, he or she must continue to love it all, worship it all, care for it all, otherwise one just dries out and dies as empty dust.

          I just watched my mother disidentify from the world, from her personality, from her consciousness, and watched her transition into the witness beyond all that appears as real, and this was the story she showed me ever so clearly: The utter mystery of going beyond the Void to the Absolute, about which nothing can be said.  Words and stories are only about consciousness and the plays within consciousness.