The Seer

What is the aim of all the beings? It is the attainment of infinite happiness. A life free from suffering, and the attainment of eternal happiness is what we want. Now, we should discriminate and analyze if there is anything in the world which can give us permanent, eternal happiness.

From the ant up to the giant of the Creator, all are in the field of change, that is, relative values. Infinite happiness can only come from something which could be immortal, non-changing, eternal. This which is the goal of everything, this infinite, is our own Self. And in order to experience that Self which is the basis of all, we don’t have to seek, we don’t have to search, we don’t have to make efforts. It’s there, present everywhere.

Wherever you are, in whatever reign of time or place, that Self is there — wherever we are in whatever time. Only, we have to take our awareness to that level and that is it. Having forgotten that level of life, we are seeking for that eternal happiness. That Self is. It is being and it is blissful. Having forgotten that, we now are seeking for it. We have forgotten what we ourselves are and we’re trying to find that in the world.

As long as we don’t enter into that area which is infinite happiness, free from suffering, so long we will not be free from suffering and we will not get into that eternal happiness. There is no happiness of significant nature in the world; the child is gone, and the youth is gone, and the man is old, and even then he is not fulfilled in the world. When he gets established in the Self, then automatically freedom from suffering and attainment of bliss will be there.

That which is omnipresent doesn’t have to be sought. It’s there already. Start to be. That which is omnipresent is not to be sought; only our awareness has to be brought to that level and that bliss is there. You don’t have to seek it. Understand? Unless we get into that omnipresent bliss, satisfaction is not going to come. If it were to come, it would have come by now through so many avenues in the world. But, it has not.

Therefore, that which is the Self is your own being. You don’t have to look in the outside. And, it is irrespective of any religious faiths or beliefs; Christians or Muslims or Hindus. That being is the knowledge itself. Only, you have to know. All these various manifestations of happiness that we experience in the world, they also are the manifestations of the same eternal being which is our own Self.

If we are aware of the Self, if we know it, fine. Otherwise, we have to be. And, therefore, it is necessary to bring our awareness deep within ourselves. As deeply as we can bring our awareness to the Self, so intensely we can inherit that which is omnipresent in our day to day life. Having known that Self we will be eternally contented; remaining in the world we will live contentment.

And, it’s not a matter of detaching ourselves from the world. Only, we have to know It, and having known It, then, all different manifestations in the world will be experienced as manifestations of That. We don’t have to detach ourselves. It is just a matter of bringing the awareness to that area, and be, and live It.

Having gained this beautiful, perfect human nervous system, if we have known that element of the Self, then we have really used this wonderful diamond-like gift, this diamond-like nervous system which is capable of giving that eternal bliss.

If it is not experienced, then we have wasted that gift of diamond. We have taken upon ourselves this human nervous system, not for the sake of petty enjoyment of changing nature in this relative field of change, but to live and be that infinite bliss.

And, we will have to attain that thing whether we attain it in this life, or in the next, or in the next. We just can’t forego that. Therefore, with the assistance of the guru and the scriptures, better to attain it quickly. Why postpone?”

~ Tat Wale Baba, Trans. from Hindi by Maharishi Mahesh Yogi

There’s an old Irish saying: “If you run away from a ghost, it will pursue you and haunt you for the rest of your life. But if you stop, turn and face it, the ghost will disappear … forever.”

On the path of awakening, you’re learning to face, not just fear, but every moment, in this alert and relaxed way. Years ago on my own journey, whenever I had a breakthrough, I found myself coming to the same realization every time. It involved letting go of some aspect of my past, my story — some pattern in my thinking or behavior which no longer worked for me.

Suddenly, I’d feel more relaxed, more here. I would say to myself: “Wow, my spiritual journey is all about getting here. It’s about being more present.”

You can probably relate to what I’m saying. As you grow up and get caught up in your personal story, the account you inwardly write of your life, of your history of failures and successes, doubts and fears, hopes and dreams, you tend to start dwelling in this internal reality. If so, you’re not alone. We all do this until we learn differently. Yet it is the very attachment to this inner world of concepts, beliefs, memories, and images that keeps us from being present.

The deeper your awakening, the freer you get of psychological and emotional fear. You no longer worry about what might happen to you. You know now that you, as consciousness, will always be okay.

But even with awakening, biological fear, the fear of actual physical harm, still arises when danger threatens. It’s a necessary survival mechanism. If someone moves as if to strike you, you are going to flinch or jump back. If you take up sky-diving, even if your realization is deep and mature, chances are your stomach will feel nervous and queasy as you are about to step out of the aeroplane at ten thousand feet.

But even survival fear loses its edge as you awaken to the Consciousness you are and connect with the astonishing creative energy which is always here, underneath the surface drama of life.

The more conscious and free you become, the more you find even in the face of danger, hardship, or loss, you remain clear-headed and supremely aware as you deal with the situation at hand. When you stop resisting and fighting it, life has its own surprising way of coming into balance and harmony. This is how miracles occur. It all happens not in some promised future or some imagined after-life, but right now, in this present moment.

Rather than obsessing over what it takes to become enlightened, why you still suffer, or why you are not yet free, let go of the attachment to all your ideas and stories about enlightenment and suffering, and just focus on being fully aware, conscious, and present now. Then the experience of freedom will become more and more frequent, and the times of conflict and suffering will be fewer and briefer.

Eventually, as your internal gaze penetrates more deeply through the illusion of the world between your ears, the world you have for so long been referring to as “me”, “myself”, and “my story,” all fear of life and death will leave you. Then the liberation you have been seeking will be yours.

~ Jim Dreaver, author of End Your Story, Begin Your Life.

~ Jim, originally from Auckland and now living in Los Angeles, is coming to New Zealand and Australia in November. He will be leading a workshop in Perth Fri. Nov 18 (free) Sat Nov. 19 & Sun. Nov. 20. To book, see: Jim’s Website or contact Pete on 08 9336 4737 or via peter@peterspearls.com.au

To begin to live in the moment more fully, we have to become aware of our egoic mind, what it is thinking, and how true those thoughts are. The good news is we don’t have to do anything to develop that awareness. We have always been aware of our mind or we wouldn’t be able to recount what’s in it or think about our thoughts.

Something else is present besides the mind that has always been aware of it and everything else that is occurring in the sensory mechanism we call our body. This awareness, this Noticer, this observer, is you, the real you.

Exercise: Noticing the Real You

The real you is subtle. This inquiry will help you become more aware of who you really are.

Who or what is it that is aware of reading these words? Notice that awareness. How do you experience it? What does it feel like? Where do you experience it? Is it contained anywhere? Just stay with the experience of it for a moment. This is who you are.

The experience of who you are is available in every moment. All you have to do is give your attention to the real you instead of to the egoic mind.

The egoic mind projects another you, the thinker of the thoughts. This is the ego, the you that you think you are: the you that has a name and looks a certain way and is a father/mother, sister/brother, and so on. (Fill in the blank with all the things you call yourself.) That you is the one that does not exist. That you isn’t real. Instead, you are the awareness of the person you think you are.

Once you see this, you have to wonder why it took so long. Programming. That’s all. We don’t see it because we are programmed to think of ourselves the way we do. There’s no getting around our programming except by seeing that it’s not the whole truth about who we are. We are programmed to believe an illusion. Once we realize this, the jig is up, as they say. The bell can’t be un-rung, and we can’t go back to believing a lie. We may still do some of the same things we did, but life is never the same.

However, our programming still has some pull. It can pull us in for a while, but not for long before we catch ourselves laughing for taking the me so seriously. We may find the ego endearing and silly, but we can’t buy into its perspective for very long. Most of what the egoic mind says just doesn’t seem true anymore.

What an amazing discovery! What a relief it is to discover that we are not this individual who suffers and struggles so. We can finally give up the effort to be somebody special, to know things, to be right, and to get it right. We were never satisfied with ourselves or others, no matter what we did or what they did. It was a no-win game. What a relief it is to give up the effort to be better, do better, and get more.

How did we miss the fact that everything we have ever wanted has been here all along? The peace, happiness, and joy we have been searching for, competing for, have been here all along in the space between our thoughts. We are that peace, happiness, and joy.

We missed it because it is who we are. It is too close for us to see, like an eye that can’t see itself. It is so ever-present that, like water to a fish, it is taken for granted and not questioned. Like the air we breathe, it is invisible and without dimension, and the ego doesn’t pay attention to such things. The ego has eyes only for the tangibles in life.

Besides, the ego has been very busy creating a life, a story, by manifesting problems and then trying to solve them. When we were identified with the egoic mind, we were too busy to ask questions. We had a thought and then did something about it. That’s what life was about. But once we begin questioning the egoic mind, the illusion begins to unravel.

When the time comes to awaken, the Self puts thoughts into the mind that question the validity of our other thoughts. The Self also draws others to us who realize the Truth and have seen through the egoic mind. Questions about the nature and purpose of life also begin to arise in the mind.

Until then, the tendency is to respect and adhere to whatever goes through the egoic mind. Like someone lost in the ocean who has just been thrown a life preserver, we cling to each thought for dear life. After all, without our thoughts telling us who we are, who would we be?

We don’t think that being no-thing is an option. To the egoic mind, being no-thing is the same as not existing. The ego would rather be anyone, even an unhappy someone, than not exist at all. This domination of the egoic mind is the cause of suffering.

~ From: Radical Happiness: A Guide to Awakening, by Gina Lake. (Available now on Kindle and other ebook formats)

The word Jnâna means “knowledge”, “insight”, or “wisdom,” and in spiritual contexts has the specific sense of what the ancient Greeks called gnosis, a special kind of liberating knowledge or intuition. In fact, the terms jnâna and gnosis are etymologically related through the Indo-European root gno, meaning “to know.”

Jnâna Yoga — (the pronunciation is approximately “Ya-nuh Yo-guh”) also called Gyana Yoga, means, the path of knowing or wisdom etc. and is virtually identical with the spiritual path of Advaita Vedanta, the Hindu tradition of nondualism. (ma’rifat in Arabic)

As used in the Bhagavad Gita, the Advaita philosopher, Adi Shankara, gave primary importance to Jnâna Yoga as “knowledge of the absolute” (Brahman). Other teachers of Jnâna Yoga are Vashishtha, Ramana Maharshi, and Nisargadatta Maharaj.

A similar nondualistic view of reality is held by many branches of Buddhism, including Zen, by Taoism, by Islamic Sufism, as well as by sapiental branches of Christianity that value the Gnosis as expressed particularly in, say, the Gospel of Thomas.

The close relationship between the Bible, for instance, and Jnâna was also pointed out by Ramana Maharshi, who once said that the whole Vedanta is contained in the two Biblical statements: “I am that I AM” and “Be still and know that I am God.”

It could also be said that Jnâna Yoga is the path of Self-realization through aperception of truth or, to be more precise the wisdom associated with discering the Real from the unreal or illusory.

Jnâna Yoga looks into the truth about who we are and what we are experiencing. The full realization of this truth brings enlightenment.

The true or ’sat’ jnâna, while it can be discussed or written about, has its real value in direct experience. It isn;t based on any preliminary idea or dogma that you have to accept or believe in. It starts from a direct ‘inseeing’ or ‘recognition’ that anyone can have, even though the habit of abiding in gnosis may have to be developed intentionally.

Jnâna Yoga can be combined with other yogic paths, such as Bhakti Yoga, which is the path of devotion and service to God.

In Jnâna Yoga, the objective is to know the absolute truth about life, the truth that is constant (unchanging) and eternal. To come to the absolute truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth about yourself and your experiences, you have to look beyond the ever changing aspects of your life-experience. You have to find that which is essentially you and is essential to all your experiences.

Jnâna Yoga uses the intellect as a tool to understand that our true Self is behind and beyond our mind. Along with Bhakti Yoga, Jnâna is among the best approaches for becoming aware of the eternal Self (God).

It is, however, a mistake to think the Source can be found with the intellect alone. For the purpose of Self-discovery, Jnâna Yoga probes the nature of the Self through the question: “Who am I?”.

Initially, Jnâna Yoga may be thought of as the ‘Quest for the Self’ or the ‘Inquiry into Who or What we really are’, but when the seeker becomes ‘a finder’, then the term indicates the path of the ’seer’.

By following this path diligently, we come to ’see’ or realize that at the center of our Being is pure Beingness (the real Self).

But to experience the Self we must know ourselves to be the Self; to experience Beingness, we must know ourselves to be Beingness (pure Awareness). The Jnâna Yogi seeks this actual experience, which can’t be compared with a mere intellectual exercise.

The promise of Jnâna Yoga is the possible culmination into what in India is called: Sahaja Samadhi, when our awareness of the formless Self continues even during our regular day-to-day activities, keeping us free of worry and anxiety. Through the constant realigning of our attention on the source of our Being, we retain a true perspective; we remember who we are.

We come to effortless clear-seeing or conscious awareness by intentionally reminding ourselves of that which we are and others essentially are — unique maniestations of the Absolute (or God).

~ To read the complete article: >>>Click Here

In general, most people are running from some kind of pain, usually an infantile one resulting from needs that were not met in childhood. The pain may have both physical and psychological components. It may have a story attached to it, or it may just be an energy field, such as sense of negativity or dread.

Multiple wounds are part of every life, even among the most privileged. Unless you are successful at dissociating, the whole of human woundedness is somehow present in you. Some people are successful at creating scar tissue over their psyches, over their emotional and physical wounds, and then just getting on with daily life.

But I suspect no one is entirely successful, and this failure is a good thing, because then the wound calls attention to itself just as grit in your shoe won’t let you be comfortable until you actually attend to it.

Of course, we search in multiple ways, both spiritual and worldly, to make that core ache go away. The thrust of most of the mind’s activity is to escape this essential, primal hurt and all of the peripherals of that hurt. Perhaps at some point we even turn to the spiritual life with the hope that a particular teaching or enlightenment will take our wounds away. We try to do what the teaching or the teacher says, and we do it over and over in the hopes that the suffering will leave us.

Surprisingly, a true teacher and a true teaching will throw you, with the greatest compassion and ruthlessness, directly into the center of the wound itself.

The deepest, most essential wound doesn’t even have a name. You can call it “the human condition”, or “conditioned existence”, or “the fact of suffering”, and there is a huge drive to escape it even though it is actually that very drive that eventually brings you full circle to meet the wound. Maturity evolves after you have tried the numerous avenues of escape, only to find that same woundedness still waiting for you.

Many of us have attempted to heal our wounds through psychotherapy, and psychological work can be very useful. Western culture in particular is a psychological culture. Psychological work can be useful in that it fosters a mental maturity where particular patterns and habitual responses can be seen.

But psychological work can only take you so far. While it can generate insights that are amazing and humbling, it doesn’t really touch the true ground of suffering. It may lead you to the recognition that even with all of your psychological or mental insight, the ground of suffering still remains, and in this way, it serves enormously.

It is at this point that you can ask yourself the question, Well, then, what will remove this ground of suffering? Even if you have worked on yourself psychologically for twenty, forty, or fifty years, if the ground of suffering is still in place, there is something essential that is yet to be revealed.

Healing wounds is appropriate. There is treatment for all wounds, and wounds that can be tended are to be tended. The problem only arises when truth itself is sought through healing. While the emotional, physical, or mental wounding is addressed, that which by its nature is whole, pure, free, and at peace goes overlooked. Truth is already here, regardless of the state of your body, your emotions, your mind, or your circumstances.

I invite you for just this moment to stop searching for relief from suffering. The invitation is neither to become oblivious to suffering, nor to give up in despair. It is an invitation to stop searching for something to rescue you from yourself.

~ From: The Diamond in Your Pocket, by Gangaji www.gangaji.org

The 8th Century’s Shankara, from India, was one of the original masters of nondual wisdom, the understanding of reality as fundamentally one, indivisible Whole. He said: “The realization of truth is brought about by perception, and not in the least by ten millions of acts.”

What he meant by this is all the spiritual techniques and practices, and all the good works in the world, will not set you free. Working with the body or engaging in breathing techniques won’t do it. Meditation won’t do it. Compassionate service to mankind won’t do it.

These practices are beneficial — and compassion, certainly, is needed throughout the world — but only the shift in perception I’ve been talking about will actually set you free: the shift from the limited, ego-bound perspective of “me, myself, and my story” into the expanded vision of clear, thought-free, present-time awareness.

The more aware of this you become, the more you intuitively realize you are not your body, mind, or senses because these can be observed. Rather, you are what is observing. What you actually are is pristine awareness or consciousness expressing through this unique instrument, this individual body/mind/self called “you.”

You are the timeless, unchanging awareness noticing and responding to the endlessly changing drama that is life. You are the consciousness giving birth to the entire world between your ears, the world that you have always thought of as “you.”

The deeper the realization of yourself as the consciousness behind everything — as the ocean, expressing itself as the wave called “you” — the closer you draw to the perceptual shift that is true inner freedom.

Eventually, if you keep seeking the core truth about who you are, the realization becomes complete and you no longer have to “work” at being aware. You will see that the world between your ears really is a kind of dream-world, a self-generated fiction, a story of your own making, and just through seeing this, it begins to fall away.

You don’t even have to actively drop it. Once you see the story you have been so attached to is not real, you will lose interest in it, in the same way a child lets go of the Santa Claus myth (albeit with much reluctance!) upon being told Santa is not real.

Your mind no longer controls you. Instead, you as consciousness are now fully in control of it. You still have thoughts, but you now know you are not your thoughts. You still have a story, but you now know you are not your story. You still have an ego, but now you know you are not your ego.

From this place of inner freedom you can then begin to use thought in a conscious, highly-intentional way. You can use the creative power of thoughts to manifest the results you seek in your life. This is what it means to see, and to live, from the Reality behind reality.

~ From: End Your Story. Begin Your Life, by Jim Dreaver

~ Jim, originally from New Zealand and now living in Los Angeles, California, is coming to New Zealand and Australia in November. He will be leading workshop in Perth F. Nov 18 (free) Sat Nov. 19 & Sun. Nov. 20 (to book, contact Pete on 08 9336 4737 or via peter@peterspearls.com.au More details at: www.jimdreaver.com

~ To see Jim in a recent 14 min video, go to ‘Being Present’.

I can’t tell you what the ‘kingdom of God’ is; no one can. It’s not a thing, it’s not a concept, it’s not a place.

The scriptures indicate that the ‘kingdom’ co-exists with that realm of consciousness witnin us which knows no change nor decay, no beginning nor end and that is subject to neither time nor space.

Our body, mind and personality develops, changes and deteriorates over our life-time, but there’s a dimension of Spirit at the core of our being, they say, that is constant, limitless and the seat of all that is sacred.

If this be true, it surely means that the ‘kingdom of God’ is neither remote nor unattainable. It’s closer than our skin and more immediate than our next breath.

You may wonder why so few seem able to find that which is closer than close and can never be lost, but it’s a bit like searching for your glasses when you have them on all the while.

St Paul urged those in a death-like spiritual sleep to awaken and to become completely open to the inner Light of Christ (Eph. 5:14). This light is like no other, being infinite, invisible and the living, luminous background that enables all things in our world to be known for what they truly are.

Those awakening out of spiritual torpor soon realize that the divine is as much inward as heavenward and that in the final quest of the soul, seekers become finders … and then, seers. In this way, they experience the divine at the core of their being.

Spiritual awakening is usually described as the final freedom, freedom from previous conditioning and mind-made suffering — freedom at last to consciously be What we really are and have always been. Awakening has nothing to do with perpetuating our egoic self.

Awakening is an opportunity to encounter our imperishable Self (the Christ) before the transient vehicle of the body/mind/personality disappears, as in the cycle of nature, it surely must.

~ Pete Sumner www.peterspearls.com.au/

Some people carry dense pain bodies that are never completely dormant. They may appear normal and indifferent, having normal relationships, going to work and socializing. Yet, just underneath the surface is a seething mass of disturbance just waiting for the next thing to react to or the next person or group to blame.

These pain bodies are hungry ghosts. They are always in a state of blaming, wanting revenge, feeling outraged and betrayed. The ego’s need for enemies is always magnified in people like this.

Because of this heightened reactivity, something that really is relatively insignificant gets magnified into a life and death situation that pulls other people into their drama. Some people get themselves involved in extended, exhausting court battles with organizations or corporations like the couple in England who sued McDonald’s over a period of 17 years.

Others are consumed with hatred toward an ex-partner or family member. Because they are not aware of the pain they are constantly carrying inside, this dense pain body is superimposed onto ordinary situations. This sets up a scenario where the person cannot tell the difference between what is happening in their reality and their reaction to it.

The resolution of this pain and suffering therefore must be outside of themselves, so split-off are these people from their dense pain-bodies. This usually brings about actions that recreate the pain body in real life real world events.

This is what seems to have happened to the Norwegian mass-murderer who appeared to everyone as an ordinary citizen, yet, for years an incredible internal hatred was brewing inside -— a pain body so dense that even to this day, there is no remorse for acting out on innocent victims.

As shocking as these extremely dense pain bodies are, they are an exaggerated symptom of the human pain body as a whole — a warning to all of us that the pain body in each of us must be recognized and resolved through understanding, compassion, and the present moment.

~ Eckhart Tolle www.tolleteachings.com

‘Illusion’ simply means ‘a play’ or ‘deceptive appearance’ — not ‘non-existence’.

The self, the ‘me’, is an illusion, not because it doesn’t exist, but because it doesn’t exist in the way we imagine it to. You’re not what you think you are.

The ‘me’ seems to be solid and separate — a ‘thing’ at the centre of life, a separate entity running my life — in the same way that there seems to be a wave separate from the ocean — but upon investigation, those assumptions crumble. The ‘illusion’ is seen through — the wave is inseparable from the ocean.

Now, it might also help if I were a little more clear about what the word ‘existence’ actually means. In the past I used to use this without realising what it actually meant. It literally means ’stand out’ (ex-sistere).

Does the wave ’stand out’ of the ocean? Yes, it appears to, AND no, it doesn’t stand out in reality, because it IS the ocean. Depends on the angle from which you’re answering the question. Both are true, both are not true.

The wave appears to exist, AND it does not exist — it does not exist SEPARATELY from the ocean. If it has an existence, that existence is inseperable from the whole. (And instead of the word ‘ocean’, you can use the words consciousness, beingness, aliveness, source, void, wholeness, nothing …)

If you can’t handle paradox, time to get out of the nondual kitchen!

In the same way, the ’self’ (the story of me) only exists as a story. I never, ever found Jeff outside of a presently-arising story about Jeff. Jeff is not there ‘lurking’ in the background — the story of Jeff appears and disappears as a story.

The story of Jeff does not appear to Jeff — that would be another story! The story of Jeff simply appears.

And where does every story appear? Here, in this wide, clear open space — awareness, consciousness, Being, Life, doesn’t really matter what words you use to point here. They’re just words. Perhaps this is what some are referring to as the space of ‘no self’.

You could say the story of the self arises and falls in this space pointed to by the words ‘no self’. Every story, every thought, every sensation, every form, comes and goes in this open space.

I gave up years ago believing that this could be captured in words. It’s like trying to capture water in a fishing net. The best we can do is point and know that we are only pointing.

Thoughts, sensations, sounds, do not happen to a ’self’ — there’s no evidence for a solid central self whatsoever — they arise and fall here, as waves appear to do in an ocean. In reality, even what we call ‘forms’ are inseparable from this formless openness, this emptiness which is actually totally full. Then we cannot talk of ‘emptiness’ or ‘void’ at all! The Heart Sutra says ‘Form is Emptiness, Emptiness is Form’. Langauge fails here, totally. It collapses.

And all language simply comes and goes in this space. All concepts of self and no self arise and fall away, leaving no trace. All concepts of duality and nonduality, choice and choicelessness, collapse. All we can do, in the end, is use words as pointers. The rest is just arguing over our favourite pointers.

Years ago, I was very certain that there was no self, and tried very hard to convince people that there was no self. I couldn’t see back then that this constant need to convince others, this sense that I was right and needed to wake others up, WAS the very self I was denying! It’s absolutely ingenious, this whole game.

Seeing the impossibility of putting this into words, the total inseparability of what I am from all that appears, the total intimacy with all impermanent forms as they arise and fall, brings much lightness and laughter. And we can still carry on debating whether or not there is a self — there’s room for that too.

There’s room for everything here! So let’s play! The only question left is — what are you defending? Even the certainty that there is no self, and the need to constantly prove that to others, can simply be something else to hold onto.

The ego becomes a ’spiritualised ego’ and pretends there is no ego. “I know there is no self, and I am right, and you are wrong… and by the way, there’s no you and no me, and it really pisses me off when you think otherwise. But there’s nobody here being pissed off.” Ingenious. And totally innocent too, by the way. And it’s all available to be seen for what it is. Always.

It’s not that I believe any of this — belief doesn’t hold up for very long. This inseparability and intimacy is confirmed in every single moment, as everything appears right here, not to Jeff, but to the wide open space that holds the story of Jeff, just as the ocean ‘holds’ all of the waves that are, intimately, itself….

And the ‘play’ goes on…

~ Jeff Foster, www.lifewithoutacentre.com/

The inscription over the ancient Greek temple of Apollo instructed all who entered to ‘Know Thyself.’

Consciousness as the knower within must cognize consciousness as its own self. The one that you are seeking is the very one that is seeking.

The great rishis and sages of the past refined their consciousness through meditation practices to make it a reliable research instrument for this exploration of consciousness. Spiritual traditions of the past have prescribed the experience of pure consciousness, or unqualified consciousness, as the means for knowing consciousness. We can also comprehend consciousness through intuition, inspiration, creativity and insight.

Objective methodologies are important and crucial aids in our quest to know consciousness, but insufficient in themselves. Wonderful insights have emerged through brain scan studies, neurotransmitter research, and molecular neurology, but they can’t show us what consciousness is.

Attempting to understand consciousness objectively is like trying to understand the music from a radio by studying the physical properties of the radio and ignoring the radio waves that the receiver is processing. Studying the brain is an inferential and intermediary way to gain information about consciousness, not a direct way.

If you close your eyes and think of a sunset in your mind, no amount of research will ever find that sunset in your brain. All you can find is electrical impulses. That image exists only in consciousness. This same principle applies to all perception.

The reason self-knowledge is considered the essence of all other knowledge is because to the enlightened sages of the past consciousness is the ground of being. Consciousness is the foundation that connects all humanity, all life, all creation.

In this respect, the brain is really the by-product or epiphenomenon of consciousness, not the other way around. Our body and biology is a product of consciousness, and it is through this human nervous system that the consciousness of the universe becomes conscious of itself.

Consciousness is not an epiphenomenon of the brain, rather it is the ground and source of our experience of the world. The tools of objective science cannot quantify consciousness. To understand consciousness we must use the subjective means of direct experience.

~ Deepak Chopra 2008

~ See and hear Chopra give an illuminating YouTube talk on, “The Mystery of Consciousness?” (74 mins)