‘It is only when we cease seeking happiness in objective experience, and allow the mind to sink deeper and

deeper
into the heart of awareness from which it has arisen, that we begin to taste the lasting peace and fulfilment for which
we have longed all our life.’

– RUPERT SPIRA
From an early age Rupert Spira was deeply interested in the nature of reality. At the age of seventeen he learnt to
meditate, and began a twenty-year period of study and practice in the classical Advaita Vedanta tradition under the
guidance of Dr. Francis Roles and Shantananda Saraswati, the Shankaracharya of the north of India.

During this time he immersed himself in the teachings of P. D. Ouspensky, Krishnamurti, Rumi, Ramana Maharshi,
Nisargadatta and Robert Adams, until he met his teacher, Francis Lucille, in 1997. Francis introduced Rupert to the
Direct Path teachings of Atmananda Krishna Menon, the Tantric tradition of Kashmir Shaivism (which he had
received from his teacher, Jean Klein), and, more importantly, directly indicated to him the true nature of
experience. Rupert lives in the UK and holds regular meetings and retreats in Europe and the USA.
 SAHAJA PUBLICATIONS

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A co-publication with New Harbinger Publications

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Distributed in Canada by Raincoast Books

Copyright © Rupert Spira 2017

All rights reserved

No part of this book shall be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by
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ISBN 978–1–62625–998–0

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I searched for myself and found only God
I searched for God and found only myself

SUFI SAYING
 CONTENTS

Acknowledgements
Note to the Reader
INTRODUCTION
The Intuition of Happiness

CHAPTER 1
Knowing, Being Aware or Awareness Itself

CHAPTER 2
The Nature of Awareness

CHAPTER 3
The Overlooking of Our Essential Nature

CHAPTER 4
The Disentangling of Awareness

CHAPTER 5
The Effortless Path

CHAPTER 6
The Inward-Facing Path

CHAPTER 7
Trailing Clouds of Glory

CHAPTER 8
The Ocean of Awareness
 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I would like to thank all those who have transcribed the meditations in this book, in particular Ed Kelly, Will
Wright, Terri Bennett, Michele Pike, Catherine Sanchez and George Mercadante. I would also like to thank Ellen
Emmet, Linda Arzouni, Marianne Slade, Jacqueline Boyle and Rob Bowden for the care with which they have
contributed in various ways to the making of this book.
 NOTE TO THE READER

The contemplations in this book are taken from guided meditations that I have given during meetings and retreats
over the past several years. They were originally delivered spontaneously but have been edited for this collection to
avoid repetition, and to adapt them from the spoken to the written word.

Meditation takes place in the space between words. Therefore, these contemplations were originally spoken with
long silences between almost every sentence, allowing listeners time to explore the statements in their own
experience. The meditations in this book have been laid out with numerous breaks between sentences and sections in
order to invite and facilitate a similarly contemplative approach.
 INTRODUCTION

THE INTUITION OF HAPPINESS

E
verybody loves happiness above all else. Even if we deny ourselves happiness for the sake of another person
or an impersonal cause, we do so ultimately because it makes us happy.

In order to fulfil the desire for happiness, most people engage in a relentless search in the realm of objects,
substances, activities, states of mind and relationships. This search also takes the form of resistance to whomever or
whatever is perceived to jeopardize our happiness. Thus, seeking and resistance are the two main impulses that
govern the thoughts and feelings, and the subsequent activities and relationships, of most people.

The activities of seeking and resisting are an inevitable expression of the sense of lack or suffering that underlies
them. However, most of us never question the origin of our suffering, so busy are we escaping the discomfort of it
through the acquisition of objects, substances, activities, states of mind and relationships. If we do question it, we
usually attribute it to the absence of the object or experience that we seek or the presence of the situation we are
attempting to avoid and, as a result, never fully trace it back to its original cause.

Our belief that happiness is dependent on objective experience is not altogether without foundation, and hence its
almost universal allure, for every time a desired object is acquired or an unpleasant situation successfully avoided,
happiness is indeed briefly experienced.

However, although the acquisition or avoidance of the object or situation puts a temporary end to the suffering that
underlies it and, as a result, brings about a brief moment of happiness, it does not uproot it or bring it to a permanent
end. It simply masks it.

No sooner does the object, substance, activity, state of mind or relationship diminish or disappear, or the situation
we sought to avoid reappear, than the happiness vanishes and the underlying suffering returns.

As a result, most people set out again in pursuit or rejection of some form of objective experience in the hopes of
repeating the experience of happiness. In this way we become addicted to the endless cycle of lack, seeking and
temporary fulfilment that characterises most people’s lives, and to which Henry David Thoreau referred when he
said that most people ‘lead lives of quiet desperation’.

Many people spend their lives managing this despair more or less successfully, medicating it with substances,
numbing it through the acquisition of objects, avoiding it through exotic or meditative states of mind, or simply
distracting themselves from it with activities and relationships.

However, at some point, either spontaneously or, in most cases, as a result of reading a book or having a
conversation with a friend, some people begin to question whether or not objective experience can ever really be the
source of the lasting peace and happiness for which they long. Others reach a point of desperation or hopelessness
before this intuition dawns.

Most people who are reading these words are doing so precisely because they have understood, or at least intuited,
that their desire for peace and happiness can never be found in objective experience. In other words, if you are
reading this book it is most likely because objective experience has failed to provide peace and fulfilment
sufficiently often that the impulse to invest your identity, security and happiness in it is beginning to wane.
This understanding or intuition is one of the most profound and disturbing recognitions that one may have, and it
initiates a crisis whose exploration and resolution are the subject matter of this book.

Once this recognition has taken place it is never possible to invest our desire for lasting peace and happiness in
objective experience with quite the same conviction again. Although we may forget or ignore it and, as a result,
repeatedly return to objective experience seeking fulfilment, our understanding will impress itself upon us with
greater frequency and power, asserting its undeniable and unavoidable truth with ever-increasing clarity, demanding
to be heard. We turn away from this intuition at our peril.

When objective experience – including any conventional religious or spiritual practices that involve directing
attention towards some more or less subtle object, such as an external god, a teacher, a mantra or the breath – has
been exhausted as a possible means by which peace and happiness may be obtained, only one possibility remains: to
turn the mind around upon itself and investigate its essential nature.

The turning of the mind away from the objective content of experience towards the source or essence from which it
has arisen is the essence of meditation or prayer. It is the ‘inward-facing path’ – sometimes referred to as self-
remembering, self-enquiry, self-abidance or the way of surrender – of which the Direct Path that is explored in this
book is the culmination.

It is the process that is described in the story of the Prodigal Son, in which the son leaves the security and comfort of
his father’s kingdom, explores all the possibilities that the world, or objective experience, has to offer in terms of
pleasure and satisfaction, and eventually realises the futility of his search. Finally he turns around towards the source
of happiness – symbolised here by his father – which was, in fact, always available to him but seemingly out of
reach due to his exclusive fascination with the drama of experience.

In this giving up or turning around, we cease being obsessed with our suffering and become interested in the nature
of the one who suffers. We turn away from the objects of experience and investigate the nature of the one who
experiences.

In this investigation, as the mind turns the light of its knowing away from the objects of experience towards its own
essence, it is gradually, or occasionally suddenly, divested of its limitations and stands revealed as the very peace
and happiness which it previously sought in objective experience.

Peace and happiness are not, as such, objective experiences that the mind has from time to time; they are the very
nature of the mind itself. Happiness is our essential nature, apparently obscured or eclipsed much of the time by the
clamour of objective experience but never completely extinguished by it.

It is for this reason that all the great religious and spiritual traditions indicate, in one way or another, that the
ultimate goal of life – lasting peace and happiness – resides within us and is equally available to all people, at all
times and in all circumstances.

One might legitimately object to the statement that peace and happiness are the essential nature of ourself, asking
why, if happiness is our essential nature, it is not always experienced. Do we not experience happiness
intermittently, just as we do all other experiences? Are not happiness and unhappiness both objective experiences
that arise and alternate in awareness?

Imagine the sky as a uniform expanse of grey cloud on an overcast day. At some point a small patch of blue opens
up, and soon numerous other small patches appear, each seemingly unconnected from the others and each appearing
and disappearing in the expanse of grey cloud.

One could be forgiven for believing, at first sight, that the natural condition of the sky was the unlimited expanse of
grey cloud and that the patches of blue were limited, temporary appearances within it. It is only when the blue
patches are investigated that it becomes clear that they are, in fact, windows onto the ever-present expanse of blue
sky in which the grey clouds temporarily appear and disappear.

Likewise, it may seem at first that moments of peace and happiness briefly punctuate our natural state, which for
most people comprises a degree of lack or dissatisfaction from which they are always in flight. However, if we make
a deep investigation of the nature of the mind,* that is, if the mind investigates its own essential nature, travelling
back through layers of thought, feeling, sensation and perception until it reaches its own essential, irreducible
reality, it will always find peace and fulfilment there.

Happiness, like the patch of blue, appears at first to be a temporary experience that occurs from time to time, but
when investigated turns out to be ever-present and always available in the background of experience.

As such, happiness is not a temporary experience that alternates with unhappiness. It is not the opposite of
unhappiness, any more than the blue sky is the opposite of the clouds. Just as the clouds are the veiling of the blue
sky, so unhappiness is the veiling of happiness.

Happiness is our very nature and lies at the source of the mind, or the heart of ourself, in all conditions and under all
circumstances. It cannot be acquired; it can only be revealed.

We cannot know happiness as an objective experience; we can only be it. We cannot be unhappy; we can only know
unhappiness as an objective experience.

In the attempt to access the peace and happiness that lie at the source or essence of ourself, most approaches to
meditation recommend the controlling, focusing or watching of the mind. However, in this approach, meditation is
not about changing experience in any way, but rather seeing clearly its essential nature.

The inward-facing path, or Direct Path, in which the mind turns its attention away from objective experience
towards its own essence or reality, is, in my experience, best elaborated in the Vedantic tradition, which details with
great precision both the philosophy and the practice of this investigation. In this way the Vedantic tradition provides
direct means for accessing the essential, irreducible nature of one’s mind and the source of lasting peace and
happiness.

However, it is inevitable that over the centuries the Vedantic approach would have tailored itself to the level of
understanding and the cultural conditioning of those to whom it was addressed and, as a result, become mixed with
elements that are not essential to it.

The approach suggested in this book is, to the best of my ability, the distilled essence of the Vedantic approach,
divested of the cultural packaging of the Eastern traditions in which I and many others first encountered it. Of
course, this book is also subject to the cultural conditioning of its time, but given that most readers will share that
conditioning, there is little chance that it will obscure or mystify the understanding it conveys.

My first teacher, Dr. Francis Roles, once said to me, ‘The truth needs to be reformulated by every generation’. It is
my hope that this book reformulates the Direct Path for those who travelled to the East, intellectually if not
physically, but found it difficult to extricate the simplicity of the non-dual understanding from the wealth of exotic
concepts in which it was shrouded, as well as for a new generation of truth seekers who are not burdened by
previous religious and spiritual teachings.

However, it is important to recognise that the inward-facing path explored in this book is only half the journey. Once
the essential, irreducible nature of the mind has been recognised, and its inherent peace and unconditional joy
accessed, it is necessary to face ‘outwards’ again towards objective experience, realigning the way we think and feel,
and subsequently act, perceive and relate, with our new understanding.

The culmination of the inward-facing path is the recognition of the presence, the primacy and the nature of
awareness – or, in religious language, spirit or God’s infinite being – which transcends all knowledge and
experience. However, it is not yet the full experiential understanding in which awareness itself, or God’s infinite
being, is known and felt to pervade and saturate all knowledge and experience, and indeed to be its sole substance
and reality. It is to recognise the transcendent nature of awareness but not its immanence.

If we do not reintegrate this understanding with our objective experience, then a fragile alliance will persist between
our essential, irreducible nature of pure awareness and all objects and others. This often manifests as a denial or
rejection of embodied life in the world and may readily become a refuge for any lingering sense of a separate self.

The process by which this reintegration or establishment takes place, although implicit in the inward-facing or
Vedantic tradition, is, in my opinion, best elaborated in the Tantric tradition, and is an exploration that lies beyond
the scope of this book.*

Future volumes in The Essence of Meditation Series will explore the collapse of the apparent distinction between
awareness and objective experience, but this volume concentrates on discovering the presence, the primacy and the
nature of awareness itself, revealing its inherent qualities of imperturbable peace and unconditional joy.

* ‘Mind’ in this context is used synonymously with ‘experience’ and includes all thinking, imagining, feeling, sensing and perceiving.
* I refer anyone who would like to make a deeper exploration of this realignment process to my collection of meditations, Transparent Body, Luminous
World – The Tantric Yoga of Sensation and Perception, published by Sahaja Publications. For an expanded discussion of the place of the Tantric tradition
in this approach, please see The Nature of Consciousness – Essays on the Unity of Mind and Matter, co-published by Sahaja Publications and New
Harbinger Publications.
 CHAPTER 1

KNOWING, BEING AWARE OR AWARENESS ITSELF

A
ll objective experience* is known. We are aware of our experience. It would not be possible to have an
experience without knowing or being aware of it. Our current thought, a memory of childhood, whatever
emotions or feelings are present, the sensation of pain or hunger, the sound of traffic, the sight of these
words or the view from our window are all known or experienced. As such, knowing† or being aware is present in
all experience.

Whether we are depressed, lonely, sad, joyful, at peace, in love, anxious, bored, jealous, excited or happy, we are
aware. Whether we are thinking, eating, walking, driving, dancing, studying, dreaming or hallucinating, we are
aware. Whatever we are thinking, feeling, perceiving or doing, we are aware.

We are aware of whatever is being known or experienced, irrespective of the contents of our knowledge or
experience.

Thus, knowing or being aware is the continuous element in all changing knowledge and experience. It remains
consistently present throughout the three states of waking, dreaming and sleeping. No other element of experience is
continuous.

In fact, being aware is not continuous in time; it is ever-present. However, as a concession to the mind’s belief in the
reality of time, let us say provisionally that being aware is the continuous element in all experience.

All objective experience – thoughts, images, feelings, sensations and perceptions – appears and disappears, but the
experience of knowing or being aware never appears or disappears. It remains present throughout all changing
experience, just as a screen remains consistently present throughout all movies.

Knowing or being aware intimately pervades all experience but is never changed by any particular experience.

Thoughts, feelings, sensations and perceptions have changed innumerable times throughout our lives, but the
knowing with which they are known – the simple experience of being aware – has remained the same throughout.

Knowledge and experience are always changing; knowing or being aware never changes.

The known always changes; knowing never changes.

Knowing or being aware is in the same relationship to all knowledge and experience as an aware screen would be to
a movie. Unlike a conventional television screen that is being watched by someone sitting on a sofa, the aware
screen of pure knowing or being aware is watching the movie of experience that is playing upon it.

Knowing or being aware is not inaccessible, unknown or buried within us. It is shining clearly in the background of
all experience, just as it could be said that the screen is clearly visible in the background of a movie.

However, just as the screen tends to be overlooked during a movie due to our fascination with the drama, so
knowing, being aware or awareness itself usually remains unnoticed due to the exclusive focus of our attention on
the objects of experience.
Knowing or being aware is not dependent on the particular conditions or qualities of experience. It shines equally
brightly in all experience, irrespective of however pleasant or unpleasant, good or bad, right or wrong experience
may be, just as a screen is equally evident throughout all movies, irrespective of their content.

Knowing or being aware is the essential, irreducible element of experience. It is fundamental to experience. It is that
element of experience that cannot be removed from it.

Knowing or being aware is never modified by experience. It never moves or fluctuates. It is the only stable element
in experience.

Knowing or being aware is the primary ingredient in all knowledge and experience. It is the background on which
all knowledge and experience take place.

Knowing or being aware is the medium upon which or within which all experience appears. It is that with which all
experience is known and, ultimately, it is the substance or reality out of which all experience is made.

It is the knowing element in all knowledge. It is the experiencing in all experience.

Just as the screen never appears as an object in a movie, although it is fully evident throughout it, so knowing or
being aware never appears as an object of knowledge or experience and yet shines clearly within all knowledge or
experience.

Although knowing or being aware is not itself an objective experience, in the sense that a thought, feeling, sensation
or perception is an objective experience, nevertheless we are aware that we are aware. Therefore, although knowing
or being aware has no objective qualities, it is at the same time known.

It is in this context that I refer to the ‘experience’ of knowing or being aware. However, in order to distinguish
knowing or being aware from all objective knowledge and experience, it is referred to as the non-objective
experience of knowing or being aware.

Knowing or being aware is not itself an objective experience, but without it there could be no experience. It is that
which makes experience possible and yet is not itself an experience.

Knowing or being aware is non-objective, transparent or colourless. It is empty of all apparent objects but full of
itself alone. It is, as such, an utterly unique experience. It cannot be known as an object and yet it is not unknown.

It is the most obvious element of experience and yet the most overlooked.

Thus it is referred to in the Kashmir Shaivite tradition as ‘the greatest secret, more hidden than the most concealed
and yet more evident than the most evident of things’.

There are no prerequisites for the recognition of knowing or being aware. To recognise the experience of knowing or
being aware does not require a particular qualification or level of intelligence.

No effort is required to recognise the experience of knowing or being aware, any more than an effort is required to
see the screen during a movie.

It is not necessary to control our thoughts, sit in a particular posture or practise something called meditation in order
to be aware of the experience of being aware. The non-objective experience of being aware is the simplest and most
intimate, obvious, self-evident fact of experience.

The experience of being aware is independent of whatever we are aware of. No experience affects the non-objective
experience of being aware, just as nothing that takes place in a movie affects the screen upon which it plays.
It is not necessary to change or manipulate experience in any way in order to notice the background of simply being
aware. We may be afraid, bored, agitated, depressed, in love or at peace; the experience of being aware remains the
same in all cases.

Just as no particular event in a movie has the ability to obscure the screen unless we allow it to do so, so no
experience has the ability to veil the experience of knowing or being aware unless we permit it to do so, in which
case it will seem to do so. As soon as we withdraw that permission, the experience of knowing or being aware
becomes self-evident.

Allow the experience of being aware to come into the foreground of experience, and let thoughts, images, feelings,
sensations and perceptions recede into the background. Simply notice the experience of being aware. The peace and
happiness for which all people long reside there.

Be aware of being aware.

In many spiritual traditions the experience of knowing or being aware is referred to as consciousness or awareness.
The suffix ‘-ness’ means ‘the state or presence of’, so the word ‘awareness’ means the state or presence of being
aware. The risk of using the words ‘consciousness’ and ‘awareness’ is that they are nouns and, as such, tend to
objectify or reify the non-objective experience of pure knowing or being aware.

In doing so they suggest that awareness or consciousness is a special, subtle kind of experience that can be found or
known in the same way that we know objective experience. As a result, many people embark on a great search,
hoping to achieve enlightenment, which is conceived as the ultimate experience or state of mind.

This search tends to abstract the experience of being aware from the intimacy and immediacy of experience and give
the impression that it is unknown, mysterious and unfamiliar. It implies that the knowledge of awareness or
consciousness is an extraordinary experience that may be found in the future.

Such a search is simply a refinement of the conventional search for happiness in the realm of objects and ultimately
leads to the same frustration.

Enlightenment or awakening is not a particular experience or state of mind that may be achieved by practising hard
enough or meditating long enough. It is the recognition of the very nature of the mind.

There is nothing more familiar or better known than the simple experience of being aware. If someone were to ask
us the question, ‘Are you aware?’ we would all answer with absolute certainty, ‘Yes’, and our answer would come
from direct experience. It would come from our obvious and intimate experience of simply being aware.

On the other hand, if someone were to ask us, ‘Is consciousness present?’ or ‘What is awareness?’ we might pause
and hesitate as to what exactly is being referred to by these words. So please understand that whenever the words
‘consciousness’ and ‘awareness’ are used in this book in place of ‘knowing’ or ‘being aware’, they are used only as
language dictates.

These words should be understood to refer directly to the obvious, familiar and non-objective experience of knowing
or being aware that all beings have in common and that pervades all knowledge and experience in equal measure.

Having noticed that the experience of being aware is our most direct and intimate experience, we may wonder who
or what it is that knows or has the experience of being aware. What is it that knows the experience of knowing?
What is it that is aware of being aware?

The common name for the experience of being aware is ‘I’. I am aware of the thought of my friend. I am aware of
the memory of childhood. I am aware of the feeling of sorrow, loneliness or shame. I am aware of the image of my
home. I am aware of the sensation of pain or hunger. I am aware of the sight of my room or the sound of traffic.
In each of these examples, ‘I’ is the name we give to that which knows or is aware of all knowledge and experience.
As such, ‘I’ is the knowing or aware element in all knowledge and experience. ‘I’ is awareness itself.

So we could rephrase the question ‘What is it that is aware of being aware?’ as, ‘Who or what is it that knows that I
am aware?’ Is it I who am aware of being aware, or is the experience of being aware known by someone or
something other than myself?

It is obviously I who am aware that I am aware. That is, it is ‘I, awareness’ that is aware of being aware. It is
awareness that knows or is aware that there is awareness. Thus, being aware or awareness itself is self-aware. Just as
the sun illuminates itself, so awareness knows itself.

Before awareness knows anything other than itself, such as a thought, feeling, sensation or perception, awareness is
aware of itself. Awareness’s nature is to be aware of itself, and thus its primary experience is to be aware of itself.

The experience ‘I am aware’ is awareness’s knowledge of itself. Hence, our knowledge of ourself is awareness’s
knowledge of itself.

Just as the sun does not need to direct its light in any particular direction in order to illuminate itself, so awareness
does not need to direct its attention, the light of its knowing, in any particular direction in order to know itself.

In fact, any direction in which the sun directed the rays of its light would only illuminate something other than itself.
Likewise, any direction in which awareness shone the light of its knowing would only give it knowledge of
something apparently other than itself.

Thus, to know itself awareness does not have to undertake any special activity or direct the light of its knowing in
any particular direction. No effort is required for awareness to know itself. In fact, any effort would take it away
from itself.

Awareness knows itself simply by being itself.

* ‘Experience’ in this context refers to both our internal experience of thoughts, images, memories, feelings and sensations and our perceptions of an
apparently external world, that is, sights, sounds, tastes, textures and smells. These are referred to collectively as ‘objects’ or ‘objective experience’.
† The word ‘knowing’ is used in this book synonymously with being aware, awareness or consciousness. It does not imply conceptual knowledge but
simply the experience of knowing itself, irrespective of whatever is known or experienced.
 CHAPTER 2

THE NATURE OF AWARENESS

J
ust as a screen is never agitated by the drama in a movie, so being aware or awareness itself is never disturbed
by the content of experience.

Thoughts may be agitated, feelings distressed, the body in pain and the world troubled, but pure knowing, being
aware or awareness itself is never perturbed by anything that occurs in experience. Thus, its nature is peace itself.

This is not a fragile peace that depends on the relative calm of the mind, body or world, but an inherent peace that is
always available in the background of experience, prior to and independent of the mind’s activity or inactivity. It is,
as such, the peace that ‘passeth understanding’.

Nothing that takes place in experience enhances or diminishes the experience of being aware or awareness itself, just
as nothing that takes place in a movie adds anything to or removes anything from the screen.

Being aware is never aggrandised or demeaned by the acquisition of knowledge or the occurrence of any particular
experience. It needs nothing from and fears nothing in experience. It stands neither to gain nor lose anything from
any particular experience.

Awareness is inherently whole, complete and fulfilled in itself. Thus, its nature is happiness itself – not a happiness
that depends upon the condition of the mind, body or world, but a causeless joy that is prior to and independent of
all states, circumstances and conditions.

It is for this reason that, when asked if there were a single message that he would like to impart to his students, J.
Krishnamurti replied, ‘I don’t mind what happens.’

Just as the screen does not share the qualities, characteristics or limitations of any of the objects or characters in a
movie, although it is their sole reality, so the knowing with which all knowledge and experience are known does not
share the qualities, characteristics or limitations of whatever is known or experienced. Thus, it is unlimited or
infinite.

Just as the screen is not conditioned by anything that takes place in a movie, so knowing, being aware or awareness
itself is never conditioned by anything that takes place in experience. Knowing, being aware or awareness itself is
the essential, irreducible essence of the mind prior to its conditioning in the form of objective experience. It is, as
such, unconditioned.

If we are absorbed in a movie it may seem at first that the screen lies behind the image. Likewise, if we are so
captivated by experience that we overlook the simple experience of being aware or awareness itself, we may first
locate it in the background of experience. In this first step, being aware or awareness itself is recognised as the
subjective witness of all objective experience.

Looking more closely we see that the screen is not just in the background of the image but entirely pervades it.
Likewise, all experience is permeated with the knowing with which it is known. It is saturated with the experience
of being aware or awareness itself. There is no part of a thought, feeling, sensation or perception that is not infused
with the knowing of it. This second realisation collapses, at least to a degree, the distinction between awareness and
its objects.

In the third step, we understand that it is not even legitimate to claim that knowing, being aware or awareness itself
pervades all experience, as if experience were one thing and awareness another. Just as the screen is all there is to an
image, so pure knowing, being aware or awareness itself is all there is to experience.

All there is to a thought is thinking, and all there is to thinking is knowing.

All there is to an emotion is feeling, and all there is to feeling is knowing.

All there is to a sensation is sensing, and all there is to sensing is knowing.

All there is to a perception is perceiving, and all there is to perceiving is knowing.

Thus, all there is to experience is knowing, and it is knowing that knows this knowing. Being all alone, with nothing
in itself other than itself with which it could be limited or divided, knowing or pure awareness is whole, perfect,
complete, indivisible and without limits.

This absence of duality, separation or otherness is the experience of love or beauty, in which any distinction between
a self and an object, other or world has dissolved.

Thus, love and beauty are the nature of awareness. In the familiar experience of love or beauty, awareness is tasting
its own eternal, infinite reality. It is in this context that the painter Paul Cézanne said that art gives us the ‘taste of
nature’s eternity’.

A character in a movie may travel the world and yet the screen, her sole substance and reality, never goes anywhere.
Likewise, although the mind continually moves – in the form of all thinking, imagining, feeling, sensing and
perceiving – pure knowing, being aware or awareness itself, its sole substance and reality, never goes anywhere.

In the form of the mind, awareness moves without moving.

Just as the screen is coloured by a movie but is never stained by it, so awareness is coloured by experience but is
never tarnished or sullied by anything that takes place within it. Pure knowing, being aware or awareness itself is
always in the same pristine condition.

No experience leaves a trace on our essential, self-aware being.

Just as the screen is utterly defenceless against anything that happens in a movie and yet is never destroyed by the
activity that takes place upon it, so awareness is completely open or vulnerable to all experience and yet, at the same
time, unharmable and indestructible.

The experience of being aware is in exactly the same condition now as it was two minutes ago, two days ago, two
months ago, two years ago or twenty years ago. The awareness with which our experience as five-year-old girls or
boys was known is exactly the same awareness with which our current experience is known.

Thus, our essential nature of knowing, being aware or awareness itself has no age. It is for this reason that as we get
older, we feel that we are not really getting older. The older we get, the more we feel that we have always been the
same person. The sameness in ourself is the sameness of awareness.

Likewise, the awareness with which our most intelligent thoughts are known is the same as the awareness with
which our most unintelligent thoughts are known.

The awareness with which the sensation of pain, tension or agitation is known is the same awareness with which the
sensation of pleasure, relaxation or warmth is known.
The awareness with which the experience of anger, sorrow or grief is known is the same as the awareness with
which the experience of gratitude, kindness or enjoyment is known.

The mind believes that awareness resides within the body and thus shares its limitations and destiny.

Therefore, the mind believes that when the body is born, awareness is born; that when the body grows old and sick,
awareness grows old and sick; and that when the body dies and disappears, awareness dies and disappears with it.

However, when the character in a movie is born, the screen is not born; when the character in a movie grows old, the
screen doesn’t age; and when the character in a movie dies, the screen doesn’t die or disappear.

Likewise, when the body appears or is born, awareness is not born; when the body ages, awareness does not age;
and when the body disappears or dies, awareness does not die or disappear. It remains in the same ageless condition
throughout.

Awareness never experiences its own appearance or disappearance, its own beginning or ending, its own birth or
death. In order to claim such an experience, awareness would have to be present prior to its own appearance,
beginning or birth and after its own disappearance, ending or death.

The finite mind imagines that awareness disappears in deep sleep, but in awareness’s experience it is the finite mind
that disappears in deep sleep, leaving awareness all alone.

Deep sleep is not the absence of awareness; it is the awareness of absence.

Thus, in its own experience of itself – and awareness is the only one that knows anything about itself – awareness is
birthless and deathless. In other words, awareness is eternal.

Just as nothing happens to the screen when a character in a movie becomes sick, so nothing happens to awareness
when the body falls ill. It is for this reason that to know one’s true nature of pure awareness is the ultimate healing.
If one knows oneself as pure awareness, or the simple experience of being aware, one is always in perfect health.

Nothing ever happens to awareness.

 CHAPTER 3

THE OVERLOOKING OF OUR ESSENTIAL NATURE

C
ease being exclusively fascinated by whatever you are aware of and be interested instead in the experience
of being aware itself.

Be aware of being aware.

Although the experience of being aware is not something that we can be aware of objectively, the non-objective
experience of being aware is undoubtedly known or experienced.

If someone were to ask us to list the contents of the room in which we are currently sitting, few if any of us would
mention space amongst our list of objects, because the space cannot be seen in the same way that a table, chair, book
or laptop is seen. And yet, at the same time, we cannot legitimately claim that the space is not being experienced.

Like empty space, relatively speaking, being aware or awareness itself has no objective qualities or features. It is on
account of its non-objectivity that the experience of being aware or awareness itself is usually ignored or
overlooked.

Indeed, most people go through their entire lives without ever questioning who or what it is that knows or is aware
of their experience, or how experience comes to be at all.

In my meetings in Europe and America I have asked thousands of people if they were ever asked by their parents,
teachers or professors who or what it is that knows or is aware of their experience, and not a single person has yet
answered in the affirmative.

It is hard to imagine a landscape painter spending her entire life painting in nature without ever noticing the light
that, relatively speaking, illuminates or renders visible the landscape. And yet most people fail to ever notice or
consider the awareness or consciousness that reveals or renders knowable all knowledge and experience.

Most of us are so fascinated by the content of experience – thoughts, images, feelings, sensations and perceptions –
that we overlook the knowing with which all knowledge and experience are known.

We neglect the simple experience of being aware that remains ever-present and changeless in the background of all
experience. We ignore awareness itself. We overlook the simple knowing of our own self-aware being.

In other words, we have forgotten who or what we essentially are and have mistaken ourself instead for a collection
of thoughts, images, memories, feelings, sensations and perceptions.

Due to this ignoring, overlooking or forgetting of our essential nature – the experience of being aware or awareness
itself – we have allowed our essential, self-aware being to become mixed with the qualities and, therefore, the
limitations of objective experience.

Just as a screen becomes mixed with the qualities of the objects in a movie and seems, as a result, to become a
landscape or a forest, so eternal, infinite awareness becomes mixed with and lost in objective experience and seems,
as a result, to become a temporary, limited awareness – the finite mind, separate self or ego. That is, we forget who
we really are.

In other words, the mind believes that awareness shares the limits and, therefore, the destiny of the body. This
apparent mixture of awareness with the properties and limitations of the body results in the separate self or ego that
most people believe and feel themselves to be.

As such, the separate self or ego is an inevitable corollary to the forgetting, overlooking or ignoring of the true and
only self* of eternal, infinite awareness, or, in religious language, the forgetting of God’s infinite being.

In spite of this, our true nature of eternal, infinite awareness is never completely forgotten or eclipsed by objective
experience. However agitated or numbed objective experience may have rendered our mind, the memory of our
eternity shines within it as the desire for happiness, or, in religious language, the longing for God.

When I say, ‘We neglect the simple experience of being aware’, I do not mean to imply that ‘we’ are one entity and
the experience of being aware is another. That is just a manner of speaking. The ‘I’ that is aware – to which we refer
when we say ‘I am aware’ – is the same ‘I’ that knows that I am aware.

The ‘I’ that is known is the ‘I’ that knows. The sun that illuminates is the sun that is illuminated.

Only awareness is aware of awareness. Only being aware is being aware of being aware.

Therefore, the ‘we’ that overlooks the experience of being aware, or the presence of awareness, is awareness
apparently overlooking or forgetting itself.

It is the self-aware screen of awareness, upon which the drama of experience is playing and out of which it is made,
that becomes so intimately involved with the objective content of its experience that it seems to lose itself in it and,
as a result, overlooks or forgets its own presence, just as a dreamer’s mind loses itself in its own dream at night.

However, knowing, being aware or awareness itself is never truly obscured by experience, just as the screen is never
veiled by a movie. Just as the screen remains visible throughout a movie, so knowing, being aware or awareness
itself knows itself throughout all experience.

Whether we see a landscape or a screen depends on the way we see, not what we see. First we see a landscape; then
we recognise the screen; then we see the screen as a landscape. First we see only a multiplicity and diversity of
objects; then we recognise the presence of awareness; then we see awareness as the totality of objective experience.
This is what the Sufis mean when they say, ‘There is only God’s face.’

And this is what Ramana Maharshi referred to when he said, ‘The world is unreal; only Brahman is real; Brahman is
the world.’

From this perspective, experience no longer veils awareness but shines with it.

The known shines with knowing.

However, as a concession to the apparent overlooking of our true nature, and the loss of peace and fulfilment that
attends it, we could say that awareness loses itself in objective experience and, as such, veils itself with its own
activity, just as a screen could be said to be obscured by the drama in a movie.

It is for this reason that the Sufi mystic Balyani said, ‘He veils Himself with Himself.’

This veiling, inadvertence or turning away from awareness is known as ‘original sin’ in the Christian tradition and as
‘ignorance’ in Vedanta. The Hebrew word most often translated in the Bible as ‘sin’ is chata’ah, meaning literally
‘to miss the mark’.

Original sin is, in this context, the missing, overlooking or ignoring of the essential element of experience –
awareness or consciousness itself, or God’s infinite being. Thus, in religious terminology to sin is to turn away from
God.

Likewise, in Sanskrit, the original language of Vedanta, the word avidya is usually translated as ‘ignorance’,
‘misunderstanding’ or ‘incorrect knowledge’. In this context ignorance does not imply stupidity, as in common
parlance, but rather the ignoring of awareness, that is, awareness’s apparent ignoring, overlooking or forgetting of
itself.

With this veiling, ignoring or limiting of awareness and its subsequent contraction into a finite mind, apparently
separate self or ego, the peace and fulfilment that are inherent in it are also eclipsed, although they echo within it as
a memory for which it longs. This longing for peace and happiness is the defining characteristic of the apparently
separate self or ego.

Thus, the forgetting of our true nature is the source of all psychological suffering, and, conversely, the remembering
of our self – its remembrance or recognition of itself – is the source of peace and happiness for which all people
long.

Once the apparently separate self or ego has exhausted the possibilities for securing peace and happiness in objective
experience, it may be open to the possibility of accessing them within itself. This intuition is the beginning of the
separate self’s return to its inherently peaceful and unconditionally fulfilled essence of pure awareness, and is thus
the resolution of its search.

All that the apparently separate self needs to do to recognise its own essential nature and thus access its inherent
peace and happiness is to recognise that its essence of pure awareness is not conditioned or limited by objective
experience. In other words, its essence must be clearly seen. That is, awareness must see itself clearly, and to see
itself clearly it must ‘look at’ itself.

However, just as the beam of light from a flashlight can be directed towards an object but cannot be directed towards
the bulb from which it emanates, so awareness, in the form of attention or mind, can direct the light of its knowing
towards objective experience but cannot direct itself towards itself.

We cannot direct our mind towards the experience of being aware; we can only direct our mind away from it.
Therefore, it would be more accurate to say that awareness must relax the focus of its attention, or disentangle itself
from the objects of experience, thereby allowing its attention to return to or come to rest in itself. Thus, the highest
form of meditation is not an activity that is undertaken by the mind. It is a relaxing, falling back or sinking of the
mind into its source or essence of pure awareness, from which it has arisen.

This returning of awareness to itself, its remembrance of itself – being aware of being aware – is the essence of
meditation and prayer, and the direct path to lasting peace and happiness.

The apparently separate self or ego is like a rubber ball that is being squeezed. All there is to the squeezed ball is the
original ball. However, squeezing the ball shrinks it and sets up a tension that is always seeking to expand it to its
original, relaxed condition. The squeezed ball does nothing; it is the naturally relaxed state of the fully expanded ball
that draws the contracted ball back to its original condition.

Likewise, the separate self is an apparent limitation or contraction of infinite awareness. All there is to the separate
self is the true and only ‘self’ of pure awareness, but its contraction into a finite entity sets up a tension that is
always tending to revert to its original, relaxed and natural condition. This pull is felt by the separate self as the
desire for happiness or the longing for God.

In reality, it is not the separate self that searches for happiness or returns to its natural, relaxed condition. It is the
pull or memory of its natural state that calls the separate self back to its innate condition of fully relaxed, inherently
peaceful awareness.

The movement of the separate self towards its essence of pure awareness is, from the perspective of the separate
self, felt as desire or longing; the pull of inherently relaxed, peaceful awareness on the contraction of the separate
self is the attraction of grace.

Our love for God is God’s love for us.

* ‘Self’ in this context does not refer to an entity or ‘a’ self. I am taking the common word for what we seem to be and applying it to our essential,
objectless, self-aware being.
 CHAPTER 4

THE DISENTANGLING OF AWARENESS

I
n order to recognise or become aware of itself as it is, awareness does not need to do anything special.
Awareness is by nature self-aware, just as the sun is by nature self-luminous.

Therefore, awareness’s knowledge of itself – that is, our knowledge of our own essential, irreducible being – is not a
new or special kind of knowledge. It is the knowledge that is inherent within awareness, though seemingly obscured
due to the exclusive focus of our attention on objective experience.

The Russian philosopher P. D. Ouspensky referred to the apparent process through which awareness recognises its
own eternal, infinite nature as ‘self-remembering’, by which he meant not the memory of something in the past that
was once known and has since been forgotten, but rather the recognition or knowing again of something that is
present and familiar, but seemingly overlooked or forgotten due to the clamour of experience.

Meditation is, as such, the remembering of our self: the pristine, luminous, inherently peaceful and unconditionally
fulfilled experience of being aware that we always and already are, which runs ever-present throughout all
experience, seemingly but never really obscured by thoughts, feelings, sensations and perceptions.

It is the remembrance or prayer to which St. Matthew referred when he said, ‘But thou, when thou prayest, enter into
thy closet, and when thou hast shut thy door, pray to thy Father which is in secret’.

In fact, our essential, irreducible self, pure awareness, cannot be remembered in the way that an object, person or
event is remembered, for only something with objective qualities can be remembered. Nor need awareness be
remembered in that sense, for only something that is lost or missing needs to be remembered.

However, if we are lost in the contents of a movie, the screen will seem to be missing or unseen. Of course, the
screen is always being seen, although we have temporarily overlooked or forgotten it due to our absorption in the
movie. Likewise, awareness is always present and aware of itself, but seems to cease knowing itself as it truly is
when it loses itself in objective experience.

In such a case, awareness’s knowledge of itself becomes mixed with its knowledge of other things and, as a result, it
seems to cease knowing itself clearly. The experience of being aware becomes distorted or obscured by the qualities
of objective experience.

Awareness becomes mixed with and, therefore, apparently limited by the qualities of thinking, feeling, sensing and
perceiving, and thus seems to become a temporary, finite self or mind.

Awareness of objects eclipses awareness of awareness.

Only the infinite can know the infinite; only the finite can know the finite.

In order to know objective experience, infinite awareness assumes the form of the finite mind, but in order to know
itself it need not assume the form of the mind. In other words, in the form or activity of the mind, awareness knows
thoughts, images, feelings, sensations and perceptions, but in the form of the mind it cannot know itself.
Awareness cannot know itself in the form of the mind because the mind is an apparent limitation of awareness, just
as a character in a dream cannot know the dreamer’s mind because she is a limitation of that very mind.

Everything the dreamed character knows is a reflection of the limitations of her own mind, and therefore she cannot
know the dreamer’s ‘unlimited’ mind,* although her own mind is made of it. The limitations of her own mind
prevent her from knowing her unlimited reality. For the same reason, the finite mind can never know unlimited
awareness, although it is a modulation of it.

Just as a movie could be said to be the activity of the screen, or a current the activity of the ocean, so mind is the
activity of awareness. As such, mind is awareness in motion; awareness is mind at rest.

The mind that seeks awareness is like a current in the ocean in search of water. Such a mind is destined for endless
dissatisfaction.

Mind is the activity or creativity of awareness in which awareness itself seems to become entangled. Awareness
seems to lose itself in its own creativity; it veils itself with its own activity.

Meditation is the disentangling of awareness from its own activity.

In meditation the simple experience of being aware is extricated from everything that we are aware of.

When we come out of bright sunlight into a dark room, we cannot do anything with the mind to make the objects
appear in the darkness. We just stay there and relax, and slowly the objects emerge.

Meditation is similar. There is nothing the mind can do to find or know awareness, for the mind is a limitation of the
very awareness for which it is in search. Anything the mind does is simply more of its own veiling activity.

Meditation is the subsidence of the activity of mind and the subsequent revelation of the very essence of the mind –
pure knowing or awareness – to itself.

Only awareness knows awareness. In the non-activity or non-practice known as meditation, the activity of the mind
subsides and, as a result, its essence of pure awareness, having lost its apparent limitations, stands revealed to itself
as it is.

If someone were to draw our attention to the white paper on which these words are written, we would suddenly
become aware of it. In fact, we were always aware of the paper but we didn’t realise it due to the exclusive focus of
our attention on the words.

Awareness is like the white paper. It is the luminous, self-aware presence upon which or within which all experience
appears, the transparent knowing with which all experience is known and, ultimately, the substance or reality out of
which all experience is made. The poet Shelley referred to it as ‘the white radiance of eternity’.

The recognition of awareness – its recognition of itself – is not something new that is seen or known; it is a new way
of seeing or knowing what is always and already present and in plain view.

Enlightenment or awakening is not a new or extraordinary kind of experience. It the self-revelation of the very
nature of experience itself.

Awareness cannot be discovered; it can only be recognised.

The disentangling of awareness from its own activity can be effected by asking a question that invites the mind to
trace its way back from objective experience towards its essential, irreducible nature.

One such question is, ‘Am I aware?’ Most questions lead awareness to direct the light of its knowing or attention
towards objective knowledge or experience, but a question such as, ‘Am I aware?’ is a sacred question that invites
the mind in an objectless direction.

As the mind proceeds in this objectless direction it begins to relax, sink or fall back into the source of awareness
from which it has arisen. The mind progressively loses its colour or activity until its essence of pure awareness is
revealed.

Alfred, Lord Tennyson was referring to this sacred investigation when he wrote, ‘Follow knowledge like a sinking
star, beyond the utmost bound of human thought’.

That is, seek absolute knowledge of the eternal, infinite, self-aware being that shines in each of our minds as the
experience of being aware or the knowledge ‘I am’, at the very source of the mind itself, prior to all objective
knowledge and experience.

The answer to the question ‘Am I aware?’ is obviously, ‘Yes’. The question ‘Am I aware?’ is a thought, in which we
are not yet certain of the answer. The answer ‘Yes’ is a second thought, in which we are absolutely certain of the
answer.

Something takes place between these two thoughts which converts the uncertainty expressed in the question to the
certainty expressed in the answer.

Whatever occurs between these two thoughts is not itself an appearance or activity of the mind; it occurs between
two such appearances or activities. And yet whatever happens in that placeless place – placeless because in the
absence of the activity of mind no time or space is experienced – gives us the conviction from which we are able to
answer ‘Yes’ to the question ‘Am I aware?’ with absolute certainty.

In order to answer the question ‘Am I aware?’ we must ‘go to’ the experience of being aware. In other words, we
must know the experience of being aware. We must be aware of being aware.

If we were not aware of the experience of being aware, we would not answer ‘Yes’ with such certainty to the
question ‘Am I aware?’

One might then wonder, who is the ‘we’ or the ‘I’ that is aware of the experience of being aware?

Only awareness is aware. Therefore, in the pause between the question ‘Am I aware?’ and the answer ‘Yes’,
awareness ceases directing the light of its knowing towards objective experience and, as a result, becomes aware of
itself.

In fact, awareness doesn’t become aware of itself. Awareness is always aware of itself, just as the sun is always
illuminating itself.

However, when awareness directs its attention or the light of its knowing towards an object, its awareness of itself is
mixed with its awareness of objects, and thus it seems to cease being aware of itself as it truly is. Therefore, in the
gap between two such objects or thoughts it seems to become aware of itself anew.

Awareness’s awareness of itself is not, in fact, a new, mysterious, uncommon or exceptional experience. It is the
most intimate, familiar and ordinary experience that it is possible to have. It is simply the knowing of our essential,
self-aware being – its knowing of itself. It is the simple experience to which each of us refers when we say, ‘I am’. It
is the knowledge of simply being.

The question ‘Am I aware?’ and the answer ‘Yes’ are thoughts. They are activities of awareness, rather than objects
appearing in awareness, just as a movie could be said to be the activity of the screen rather than an entity with its
own independent existence that appears on the screen.

As such, being aware of being aware – awareness’s awareness of awareness – is revealed between two activities of
the mind, that is, between two thoughts or perceptions, just as the blank screen is exposed between two frames of a
movie.

In the pause between the question ‘Am I aware?’ and the answer ‘Yes’, the mind is relieved of its activity and, as a
result, its limitations, and stands revealed as infinite awareness, illuminating or knowing itself alone.

Awareness is aware of awareness.

To begin with, awareness may seem to find it difficult to remain with itself, that is, to stay with the non-objective
experience of simply being aware, so accustomed is it to assuming the form of mind and, as such, directing itself
towards objective experience.

As soon as this is noticed, we may ask again, ‘Am I aware?’, in this way inviting the mind away from the objects of
knowledge or experience, towards its essence or source.

The mind can only stand as such by attending to an object, so when the mind asks itself the question ‘Am I aware?’
it embarks on a journey in an objectless direction – a pathless path – away from thoughts, images, feelings,
sensations and perceptions and towards its essential, irreducible essence of pure awareness.

Ramana Maharshi referred to this non-process as ‘sinking the mind into the heart’.

During this directionless journey, the mind sinks or relaxes backwards, inwards or ‘selfwards’. As it does so it is, in
most cases gradually, occasionally suddenly, divested of its finite, limited qualities and, at some point, stands
revealed as pure mind, original mind or infinite awareness.

In fact, to suggest that the mind embarks on a journey to rediscover its essence or reality may be misleading. How
much distance is there between an image and the screen?

The path of the finite mind to its fundamental, irreducible essence is not a journey from one place or entity to
another, although, as a concession to the mind’s belief in itself as a separate, independently existing entity, this
discovery is often depicted as a journey, path or pilgrimage. It is more like the fading of an image on a screen.

Mind is the self-colouring activity of awareness. Meditation is the fading or dissolving of this self-colouring activity
and the subsequent revelation of the colourless essence of the mind, pure awareness itself.

Being aware of being aware – awareness’s awareness of awareness – is a colourless, non-objective experience. It is
an experience of the essence of the mind after it has been divested of its finite qualities. It is, as such, pure mind –
awareness itself – knowing its own intrinsic, irreducible, indestructible essence. In the Zen tradition it is referred to
as ‘our original face’.

The transparent, colourless experience of being aware or awareness itself cannot be known or remembered by the
mind because mind – the activity of awareness – is not present, or rather, is not active there.

The mind, at best, overlooks the non-objective experience of being aware and may even deny its very presence.
Such a mind is like a wave denying the existence of water.

However, a mind that is accustomed to repeatedly dissolving in its source or essence becomes progressively
saturated with its inherent peace. When such a mind rises again from the ocean of awareness, its activity makes that
peace available to humanity.

Such a mind may also be inspired by knowledge that is not simply a continuation of the past but comes directly from
its unconditioned essence. This inspiration brings creativity and new possibilities into whatever sphere of knowledge
or activity in which that mind operates.
* In reality the dreamer’s mind is limited, but in this analogy the dreamer’s mind represents unlimited awareness.
 CHAPTER 5

THE EFFORTLESS PATH

T
he word ‘attention’, from the Latin a-, meaning ‘to’ or ‘towards’, and tendere, meaning ‘to stretch’, implies a
stretching or directing of awareness towards an object of knowledge or experience.

Just as the sun shines the rays of its light on an object in order to illuminate it, so awareness directs the light of its
knowing towards a thought, feeling, sensation or perception in order to know it.

However, just as the sun cannot shine its own light on itself because it is already standing at itself, so awareness
cannot direct the light of its knowing towards itself because there is no distance from itself to itself.

It is not because awareness is so far that it seems to be unknown or missing; it is because it is so close. It is closer
than close.

If someone were to ask us, relatively speaking, to stand up and take a step towards ourself, in which direction would
we turn? We cannot take a step towards ourself, because we are already standing at ourself. Nor indeed can we take
a step away from ourself, because we take ourself with us wherever we go.

Likewise for awareness. In order to know itself it doesn’t have to do anything or go anywhere. It doesn’t have to
direct its knowing towards itself, because it is already standing at itself. Awareness is too close to itself to know
itself in subject–object relationship.

In order for any knowledge or experience to be known, a knowing subject must stand apart from the known object,
other or world. Attention is the distance between the subject and the object. As such, the subject–object relationship
is the means by which all conventional knowledge and experience are known.

Everything apart from awareness, that is, all objects of thought and perception, is known by something other than
itself – a separate subject of experience – but awareness is known by itself alone. Therefore, awareness’s knowledge
of itself is a unique kind of knowledge. It is the only form of knowledge that does not require the subject–object
relationship. It is absolute knowledge. That is, it is the only knowledge or experience that is not relative to or
dependent upon the finite mind, the apparently separate subject of experience.

In fact, all relative knowledge and experience are derived from and are a refraction of this single, non-dual, absolute
knowledge, just as the apparent multiplicity and diversity of the objects and people in a night dream are refractions
of a single, indivisible mind.

In order to shine on the moon, the sun’s light must travel a certain distance through space. But in order to illuminate
itself, the sun doesn’t need to go anywhere or do anything. The sun’s nature is illumination. Just by being itself the
sun illuminates itself.

In other words, for the sun, to be itself and to illuminate itself are the same. Illuminating itself is not something that
the sun does; it is what it is. It is self-illuminating.

Likewise, awareness knows itself simply by being itself, without the need for any other agency. That is, awareness
knows itself by itself, in itself, through itself, as itself alone, without the need to rise in the form of mind or attention.

This is what Balyani meant when he said, ‘I knew my Lord through my Lord.’
Awareness is our primary experience; that is, being aware is awareness’s primary experience. Before awareness
knows objective experience, it knows itself.

In order to know something seemingly other than itself, such as a thought, feeling, sensation or perception,
awareness must shine its attention, the light of its knowing, away from itself, towards that object, but in order to
know itself it does not need to direct the light of its knowing away from itself.

Awareness’s nature is pure knowing. It is self-illuminating, self-knowing, self-aware.

There is no difference between our own being and the knowing of our own being, just as there is no difference
between the sun and its shining.

Awareness knows itself simply by being itself.

Awareness is so close to itself that there is no distance between itself and itself and, therefore, no room for a path.
Any path would be a path from awareness towards an object.

From awareness to awareness there is no space, no distance, no time and, therefore, no possibility of a path or
practice. Thus, being aware of being aware is a non-practice.

This is why the Direct Path is referred to as a pathless path. In the Direct Path we start with the goal and we stay
there. That is, awareness starts with itself and stays with itself. Thus, the highest meditation is simply to be.

For this reason, there can be no effort in this non-practice. Any effort would involve directing the mind towards an
object or trying to control the focus of attention.

Just as the stretching of a rubber band sets up a state of tension that is always tending to revert to its original, relaxed
condition, so attention, or the directing of awareness towards an object, establishes a subtle tension that is always
tending to revert to its natural state of equilibrium.

The desire for peace or happiness is the desire to return to our original, inherently relaxed condition.

Meditation is the relaxation of the tension in attention and the subsequent return of awareness to itself. It is a
dissolving of the mind in the heart of awareness, not a directing of the mind towards any kind of objective
experience.

In fact, to say that awareness ‘returns’ to itself is a concession to one who believes himself to be a separate self or
finite mind and, as such, seems to be cut off from his inherently peaceful nature of pure awareness. For such a one,
there seems to be a returning. For awareness, there is just a recognition.

Meditation is not something we do; it is something we cease to do. Thus, it could be called self-returning or self-
resting.

Everything apart from the knowing of our own being requires some kind of activity. Thinking, feeling, acting and
perceiving are all activities of mind, although in almost all cases we have become so accustomed to this activity that
it is no longer registered as such.

However, being aware of being aware – awareness’s awareness of itself – is the only truly effortless experience
there is. Everything else, even breathing or thinking, requires energy.

This is what Ashtavakra meant when he said, ‘For the sage, even blinking is too much trouble.’

Mind is the activity through which and as which awareness knows objective experience. Therefore, in awareness’s
knowledge of itself – being aware of being aware – there is no need or room for any movement or activity of the
mind.

There is no pathway from our self to our self, from awareness to awareness. Having no room for a path and,
therefore, no room for a practice, there is no room for a practitioner or a self to travel from awareness to awareness.

We could only practice being aware of something apparently other than awareness. Indeed, the separate self or ego
exists as the very activity that ensues between awareness and its object.

The sun that illuminates is the sun that is illuminated. The awareness that knows is the awareness that is known.

Meditation is between awareness and itself. It is simply awareness being itself, resting in itself, knowing itself alone:
being aware of being aware.

This is why it is said in the Book of Revelation, verse 22:13, ‘I am the Alpha and the Omega; I am the first and the
last; I am the beginning and the end.’

T. S. Eliot referred to the same understanding in his poem ‘Little Gidding’ when he wrote:

What we call the beginning is often the end And to make an end is to make a beginning. The end is
where we start from.

In the Direct Path, awareness is simultaneously the origin, the path and the goal. Being aware is simultaneously the
subject that knows, the process of knowing and the object that is known.

Being aware is being aware of being aware.

Awareness is aware of awareness.

Knowing is knowing only knowing.

Being aware of being aware is the essence of meditation. It is the only form of meditation that does not require the
directing, focusing or controlling of the mind.

We cannot become what we essentially are through any kind of practice. Through practice we can only become
something that is not essential to us.

We can become fifty years old. We can become tired. We can become married. We can become lonely. But our
essential, self-aware being is prior to all becoming, and indeed remains present, albeit usually unnoticed, throughout
all becoming.

However, once we seem to have become a separate self or finite mind, our essential nature of pure awareness seems
to be missing, veiled or lost. Therefore, from the perspective of a separate self or temporary, limited awareness,
there seems to be a practice that must be undertaken or a path that must be travelled to find or know again our
essential self and, above all, to access the peace and happiness that are innate to it.

Thus, as a compassionate concession to the belief in being a temporary, finite entity or self, the non-dual teaching
will, in most cases, encourage the practice of meditation, in the form of self-enquiry or self-surrender.

This point is often misunderstood in contemporary expressions of non-duality. In order to accommodate the
experience of suffering and yet maintain an apparently enlightened perspective, such a teaching claims, ‘All
suffering appears in awareness, but there is no one here who suffers and, therefore, nothing to do.’

In such a statement, the non-dual teaching is being used in the same way that objects, substances, activities, states of
mind and relationships were previously used, namely, to distract the apparently separate self from its suffering. In
other words, the separate self has appropriated the non-dual teaching and is using it to perpetuate its own illusory
existence.

If we are suffering it would be better to be honest with ourself and investigate the one who suffers. After all, if we
are suffering we are, by definition, seeking. Doing nothing is not an option for one who considers himself to be a
separate self.

For such a one there are only two possibilities: to seek temporary relief in objects, substances, activities, states of
mind and relationships, or to seek the source of suffering within himself through self-enquiry or self-investigation,
which naturally leads to self-abidance or self-surrender.

Thus, for most people, meditation, self-enquiry or contemplative prayer will seem, at least initially, to be an activity
that they as a separate self practise, and only gradually, as their understanding matures and their practice is refined,
will self-enquiry give way to self-abidance, self-resting or self-surrender.

That is, only gradually, in most cases, will it become clear that meditation is what we are, not what we do, and that
the separate self or finite mind is what we do, not what we are.

Until this is recognised, meditation will seem to require an effort, and if this is the case, and for as long as it seems
to be so, we should make the effort.

In time it will become clear that we cannot make an effort to be or know our self – we can only make an effort to be
or know something apparently other than our self – and at that point our effort will come spontaneously to an end.

In order to clench our fist an effort is required, but after some time of holding our hand in that position, the clenched
fist will seem to be the natural condition of our hand and we will no longer be aware of the effort required to
maintain it. If we were now to open our hand, it would seem initially that we needed to make an effort to do so.

It is only because the clenched fist seems to be the natural condition of the hand that an effort seems to be required
to open it. Once it is understood that the natural condition of the hand is one of openness, it becomes clear that the
opening of the hand did not require a new effort but rather the relaxation of the previously undetected effort of
closing it.

The separate self or ego is like the clenching of the fist. It is a contraction of infinite awareness into an apparently
finite mind.

Most of us have become so accustomed to the tension inherent in the separate self that we believe and feel that it is
our natural state, and so from this perspective it seems that we have to make an effort to know and rest in and as
awareness.

However, once our true nature of pure awareness has become apparent, we realise that no effort is required either to
return to it or to remain there. In fact, we become sensitive to the subtle effort that the mind almost continuously
makes in order to maintain the illusion of a separate and independently existing self.

As an inevitable corollary to this understanding, to remain knowingly the presence of awareness becomes
increasingly our natural condition, until there is no longer a distinction between meditation and life.

Effortless being is our natural state.

 CHAPTER 6

THE INWARD-FACING PATH

A
wareness shines in each of our minds as the experience of being aware, the feeling of being or the
knowledge ‘I am’. As such, the knowledge ‘I am’ is awareness’s awareness of itself.

The knowledge ‘I am’ shines briefly in our experience at the end of every thought, feeling, sensation or perception,
although it usually remains unnoticed due to its brevity, as when the screen is revealed between two frames of a
movie.

The knowledge ‘I am’ is also present during all thinking, feeling, sensing and perceiving but seems to be veiled by
them, just as the screen remains present during a movie but seems to be obscured by it.

The knowledge ‘I am’, or awareness’s knowledge of itself, is thus prior to and beyond all the finite mind’s relative
knowledge and experience, as well as being its ultimate reality. As such, it is absolute knowledge.

In religious terms this absolute knowledge is known as God. Thus, our knowledge of our self is God’s knowledge of
Himself. It is for this reason that in the mystical Christian tradition, the resting of the mind in the heart of awareness
is known as the practice of the presence of God or the surrender of the mind to God’s infinite being.

The Indian sage Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj referred to it as focusing on the ‘I am’, by which he meant resting in the
experience of ‘I am’, that is, simply resting in and as our essential, unconditioned, self-aware being.

The use of the word ‘focusing’ in this context is a concession to the mind’s normal activity of directing itself
towards or focusing on objective experience. To such a mind, the teaching suggests reorienting attention towards the
knowledge ‘I am’. However, this is not a directing of the mind but rather a resting of the mind in its own essence,
the simple, non-objective experience of being aware or awareness itself.

For a mind that is accustomed to directing itself exclusively towards objective experience, the experience of being
aware, the feeling of being or the knowledge ‘I am’ is a trace or a hint in the mind as to the direction in which to
look for the peace and happiness for which it longs.

The knowledge ‘I am’ is like a small image of a screen appearing on that screen. From the standpoint of the image,
the image of the screen is part of the image; from the standpoint of the screen it is the screen. From the point of view
of the mind, the knowledge ‘I am’ is an experience within the mind; from the point of view of awareness, it is
awareness itself.

It is this recognition that is referred to in the Sufi saying ‘I searched for God and found only myself; I searched for
myself and found only God.’

Thus, the knowledge ‘I am’ is the experience in which the finite mind and infinite awareness intersect. It is a beacon
that shines with the presence of awareness in the midst of experience. It is a portal through which the mind passes on
its journey back to its source.

It is for this reason that the words ‘Know Thyself’ were carved above the entrance to the temple of Apollo in Delphi.
And it is for the same reason that Balyani said, ‘Whoever knows their self knows their Lord’.
The journey that the mind takes from the objective content of its experience to its ever-present, innermost,
irreducible essence is known in the Eastern traditions as meditation and in the West as prayer. It is sometimes
referred to as the inward-facing path or the path of discrimination. This is not meant to imply inwards into the body,
but rather inwards, away from the objects of experience, towards the irreducible essence of the mind.

In Sanskrit it is referred to as atma vichara, which is often translated as ‘self-enquiry’ or ‘self-investigation’.

However, this can be misleading because the words ‘enquiry’ and ‘investigation’ in Western culture suggest a
process or activity of the mind. ‘Self-abidance’ or ‘self-resting’ would be a better translation.

Having said that, the phrases ‘self-enquiry’ and ‘self-investigation’ are legitimate because this process is, in most
cases, initiated by a question such as, ‘What is it that knows or is aware of my experience?’, ‘Where do thoughts
come from?’, ‘What is the nature of the knowing with which all knowledge and experience are known?’, ‘Am I
aware?’ or ‘Who am I?’

As the mind ponders these questions, it becomes progressively refined, travelling back through layers of objective
experience, gradually purifying itself of all objective, limiting qualities. In this way self-enquiry or self-investigation
gradually loses its dynamism and gives way to self-abidance, self-resting or self-remembering, in which its own
essential, irreducible essence stands revealed.

The word ‘revelation’ comes from the Latin revelare, from re-, meaning ‘back to the original’, ‘again’ or ‘anew’,
and velare, meaning ‘to cover or veil’. Thus, a revelation is not a new experience but rather the laying bare or
uncovering of an essential truth that was previously obscured or distorted. As such, meditation or prayer is the
unveiling of the mind and the subsequent exposure of its essential, irreducible essence.

In other words, although meditation may seem at first to be an activity that the mind undertakes in order to achieve
some new state or experience, it is later understood to be the very nature or essence of the mind itself.

Meditation is what we are, not what we do.

Most forms of meditation involve directing the mind towards some kind of object, such as a mantra, a flame, a deity,
a guru, the breath or the pause between breaths. In the case of conventional prayer our love is directed away from
ourself towards God, who is conceived to exist at an infinite distance from ourself.

All these forms of meditation or prayer require directing the mind towards more or less subtle objects and, as such,
they all maintain the subject–object relationship. Whilst these are entirely legitimate and, in many cases, necessary
preludes to the ultimate meditation or prayer, they must at some point be abandoned.

All paths have their strengths and potential pitfalls. For those on a path of devotion, to relinquish the object of
devotion is the ultimate surrender. For those on a path of knowledge, to relax the focusing of attention or the
controlling of the mind is the final test.

Subject and object are like two sides of the same coin. They cannot arise or exist independently of one another. In
order for the mind, the separate subject of experience, to disappear or, more accurately, to lose its apparent
limitations, the separate object of experience must also dissolve.

In order for love to be experienced, both the lover and the beloved must vanish.

Being aware of being aware – abiding in and as the self, resting in the ‘I am’, practising the presence of God – is the
only form of meditation or prayer in which the ego, the apparently separate subject of experience, is not maintained.
It is, as such, the highest form of meditation or prayer. It is the meditation or prayer for which all other meditations
and prayers are preparations.

Our essential nature of inherently peaceful, unconditionally fulfilled awareness – which shines in each of our minds
as the simple experience of being aware or the knowledge ‘I am’ – is equally present and available to all people,
under all circumstances, in all situations and at all times.

It is not awareness that is obscured or missing; it is we who have turned away from it. That is, it is the mind that has
turned away from its source and essence.

However, I do not mean to suggest that mind is one thing and awareness another. The mind is in the same
relationship to awareness as the character in a dream – from whose point of view the dreamed world is known – is to
the dreamer’s mind. All there is to the character in the dream is the dreamer’s mind, but the dreamed character does
not know this.

As long as the dreamed character is focused exclusively on the objective content of her experience, she will never
recognise the nature of her own mind or, therefore, the reality of her world, and will never find the peace and
happiness for which she longs.

In order to know her own nature, she must turn her attention away from the objects of experience, towards that with
which they are known. She must know the nature of the knowing with which all knowledge and experience are
known. She must become aware of the experience of being aware, which is the essence of her own mind.

At night, the sun doesn’t disappear. It continues to shine with the same brightness. It is the earth that has turned
away from the sun and, as a result, has fallen into partial darkness. As soon as the earth turns round, so to speak, that
part of it that was in darkness lights up.

The Fall in the Christian tradition is simply the turning away of the mind from its essence. It is the turning away of
the soul from God’s infinite being.

The presence of awareness always shines with the same brightness, behind and in the midst of all experience. All
experience is saturated with its presence. All that is necessary is to ‘turn round’.

Lalla, a fourteenth century mystic and poet from the Kashmir Shaivite tradition, referred to this turning around when
she said, ‘I travelled a long way seeking God, but when I finally gave up and turned back, there He was, within me.’

We have searched for so long in objects, substances, activities, states of mind and relationships for peace and
fulfilment. Although the acquisition or experience of any of these brings our search temporarily to an end and, as a
result, gives us a brief taste of the peace and fulfilment for which we long, they do not last.

It is only when we ‘give up and turn back’ – only when we cease seeking peace and fulfilment in objective
experience and turn the mind in the directionless direction, allowing it to sink deeper and deeper into the heart of
awareness from which it has arisen – that we begin to taste the lasting peace and fulfilment for which we have
longed all our life.

From the perspective of the mind, this non-practice of abiding or resting in the experience of being aware or
awareness itself seems to be a blank or dull state. However, in time, awareness’s innate qualities of imperturbable
peace and causeless joy emerge, in most cases gradually.

This giving up and turning back, the turning around of the mind, was referred to in the early Orthodox Church as
Hesychasm, the silence of the heart.

It is the remembrance to which Isaiah refers in the Old Testament when he says, ‘Thou wilt keep him in perfect
peace whose mind is stayed on Thee.’

It is the non-activity in which the path of knowledge and the path of love or devotion meet. It is the experience in
which self-investigation and self-surrender are understood to be one and the same.
Awareness’s recognition of itself – being aware of being aware – is not some kind of new knowledge; it is simply
the clear seeing of what was always and already the case but seemingly obscured by the activity of thinking and
perceiving. Nor is awareness’s recognition of its own essential nature an extraordinary experience to which some
minds have privileged access.

Being aware shines equally brightly in all experience. Even a deep depression is illuminated by the light of
awareness. Being aware is not buried, veiled or hard to find. It is the very light of knowing with which all
experience is known.

Ramana Maharshi and the Buddha did not have special access to the nature of their own minds, nor any special
qualifications. The Buddha just sat down under a tree and said to himself, ‘I am going to stay here until I recognise
the nature of my own mind’. The essential nature of his mind was exactly the same as the essential nature of each of
our minds.

When Ramana Maharshi was suddenly overcome by the fear of death, he lay down on the ground and simply asked
himself, ‘What is the essential nature of myself? What cannot be removed from myself? What happens to awareness
when the body dies?’ In other words, he spontaneously engaged in the process of self-investigation.

As a compassionate concession to people’s difficulties and objections, all the great spiritual and religious traditions
have enumerated various disciplines and practices to refine and prepare the mind for its eventual subsidence in its
source or essence.

Ramana Maharshi bypassed all these progressive means and went directly from his current experience to the
essential nature of his mind, thus resurrecting the Direct Path for our age.

This is the age of the Direct Path.

 CHAPTER 7

TRAILING CLOUDS OF GLORY

I
magine an actor named John Smith who plays the part of King Lear. John Smith represents infinite awareness
and King Lear the finite mind or apparently separate self.

Just as John Smith and King Lear are not two different selves, but rather the latter simply an imaginary limitation
self-assumed by the former, so infinite awareness and the finite mind are not two different entities. The finite mind
is simply an imaginary limitation, self-assumed by infinite awareness for the sake of manifesting objective
experience.

Imagine that John Smith played his role so effectively one night that he forgot who he really was and believed, as a
result, that he actually was King Lear. What would King Lear have to do in order to realise that he was John Smith
and thus be relieved of his suffering? In reality, King Lear could not do anything, because there is no real person
called King Lear.

To suggest that King Lear has to do something to become John Smith would validate King Lear’s belief in himself
as an independently existing person or entity, and would thus subtly perpetuate the cause of his suffering. However,
if King Lear does nothing he will simply remain King Lear – or at least he will seem to do so from his own
imaginary point of view – and, as a result, will continue to suffer.

In this case, King Lear will continue to seek relief from his suffering through the acquisition of objects, substances,
activities, states of mind and relationships – a never-ending search that will only compound his unhappiness.

Therefore, as long as King Lear believes that he is King Lear, there is something for him to do. In fact, it is not
possible for King Lear to exist without undertaking some activity to relieve his suffering. If we are suffering we are
by definition already engaged in a relentless search for happiness in objective experience, and therefore ‘doing
nothing’ is not an option. Seeking happiness in objective experience is the activity that defines the apparently
separate self.

As a compassionate concession to one in such a predicament, the non-dual teaching will suggest some activity or
practice whereby the one who suffers will be led, either directly or indirectly, to the source of peace and happiness
within herself.

If the one who suffers is sufficiently mature, the teaching will guide her attention directly to the source or essence of
her own mind, wherein lie the peace and happiness for which she longs.

However, if her mind is so accustomed to seeking happiness in objective experience that it is not yet stable or
mature enough to turn away from the objects of experience and towards their subjective source, the teaching may
give her some intermediary practice aimed at preparing her mind for its eventual return to and dissolution in its own
essence.

These preparatory practices involve disciplining the body and the mind for the purpose of freeing attention from its
fixation on the objects of experience. When attention has been purified, at least to a degree, of its habit of pursuing
peace and happiness in objective experience, the mind will only need a small hint as to where to find the peace and
happiness for which it longs. A question such as, ‘Who am I?’ or ‘Am I aware?’ will suffice.
Whilst all such preliminary practices are legitimate and appropriate solutions to the various inclinations, abilities and
degrees of maturity of spiritual seekers, they must all lead sooner or later to divesting the mind of its limitations.

The Direct Path, by which the mind returns directly to its source through the recognition of its innate peace, clarity
and luminosity, is the essence and culmination of all spiritual practice and can be found at the heart of all the great
spiritual and religious traditions.

Let us return to King Lear, and let us assume that in spite of being deeply involved in the affairs of his kingdom, his
mind is sufficiently mature to reflect on its own essence.

What does King Lear have to do to recognise he is John Smith? He need only ask himself about the essence of his
own mind: ‘Who am I really? What is it that knows or is aware of my experience? Am I aware?’

Each of these questions will lead King Lear away from the objective content of his experience – the drama with his
daughters and courtiers – towards the essence of his own mind, the simple experience of being aware or awareness
itself. In other words, each of these questions will draw King Lear closer to the knowledge of himself as John Smith.

As King Lear travels back through layers of his own mind, discarding anything that is not essential to it – his
thoughts, images, memories, feelings, sensations and perceptions – the essence of his mind will begin to emerge
from its apparent obscurity. At some point, when all superfluous knowledge and experience have been discarded, the
knowledge ‘I am John Smith’ is revealed.

However, it is not King Lear who recognises John Smith. Only John Smith has the experience of being John Smith.

John Smith is one person, so the knowledge ‘I am John Smith’ is non-dual knowledge: it does not take place in
subject–object relationship. The John Smith that knows is the John Smith that is known. The ‘I’ that knows is the ‘I’
that is known. John Smith does not need to do anything or go anywhere in order to know himself. He knows himself
simply by being himself.

Likewise, only awareness is aware of awareness. The finite mind is not an entity in its own right. It has no existence
of its own. It is the activity that awareness assumes in order to know objective knowledge and experience, just as we
might say that King Lear is the activity that John Smith assumes in order to manifest the drama of the play.

Just as John Smith never ceases being John Smith or becomes King Lear, likewise, at no point does awareness cease
being awareness or become a finite mind. And just as it is not King Lear who knows John Smith, so, likewise, it is
never a finite mind that becomes or knows infinite awareness.

It is for this reason that Balyani said, ‘No one sees Him except Himself, no one reaches Him except Himself and no
one knows Him except Himself. He knows Himself through Himself and He sees Himself by means of Himself. No
one but He sees Him.’

When King Lear and John Smith each say ‘I’, they refer to the same essential ‘I’, although for King Lear this ‘I’ is
coloured and thus apparently limited by thoughts, feelings, sensations and perceptions, whereas for John Smith it
shines clearly as it is.

In reality, the self of King Lear is the true and only self of John Smith. The ‘I’ of the finite mind or apparently
separate self is the true and only ‘I’ of infinite awareness.

This is what Meister Eckhart was referring to when he said, ‘The eye with which I see God is the same eye with
which God sees me.’

The apparently separate self or finite ‘I’ around whom all experience revolves is the true and only ‘I’ of eternal,
infinite awareness – the ‘I’ of God’s infinite, self-aware being that shines in each of our minds as the knowledge ‘I
am’ – temporarily coloured by thoughts, images, feelings, sensations and perceptions but never being or becoming
anything other than itself.

No self other than eternal, infinite awareness, or God’s infinite, self-aware being, has ever come into existence. To
believe so is blasphemy.

There is only infinite awareness, assuming the activity of the finite mind, thereby veiling itself with its own activity
and appearing to itself as a multiplicity and diversity of objects and selves, but never actually being, becoming or
knowing anything other than its own eternal, infinite being.

We do not have to eradicate a separate self in order to be knowingly eternal, infinite awareness or God’s infinite,
self-aware being. There is no separate self to be eliminated. To attempt to dissolve or annihilate a separate self
simply perpetuates its illusory existence. To discipline the separate self is to maintain the separate self.

The separate self is an illusion that seems to exist only from its own illusory point of view. However, all illusions
have a reality to them. The reality of the apparently separate self or finite mind is infinite awareness.

Seeing the reality of infinite awareness is the death or dissolution of the apparently separate self or ego. This is
referred to in the Zen tradition as the Great Death. It is represented in the Christian tradition by the crucifixion.

Until this point the separate self or ego has been equated with the finite mind due to the identification of the self
with the mind. However, we must now make a distinction between a finite mind that believes in its own separate and
independent existence – that is, the separate self or ego – and a mind that has been divested of all such beliefs and
feelings and, as a result, shines with the knowing of its own reality.

In the case of the latter, the finite mind will continue to arise from its source or essence of pure awareness, but its
sense of separation and limitation has been neutralised in the clear light of this self-recognition. Although its ability
to mislead us may linger for some time through force of habit, it is only a matter of time before it fades.

It is for this reason that when the Indian sage Atmananda Krishna Menon was asked how to know when one is
established in one’s true nature, he is said to have replied, ‘When thoughts, feelings, sensations and perceptions can
no longer take you away’.

To refer to the death or dissolution of the separate self or ego is, at best, a concession to the mind’s belief in its own
independent existence. More often it is a misunderstanding.

In reality, the mind cannot be said to have disappeared or dissolved, for there was no real, independently existing
entity or mind present to begin with, just as King Lear cannot be said to have vanished because he never truly
existed as such.

King Lear is an illusion. However, like all illusions, there is a reality to him. The reality of King Lear is John Smith.
When everything illusory has been removed from King Lear, John Smith stands revealed as he is. In other words, no
new knowledge has been added to John Smith. It is only that ignorance has been removed from him.

The recognition of our essential, self-aware being – its knowing of itself – is the self-knowledge that shines after
ignorance has been removed from it.

The removal of ignorance and the consequent dawning of true knowledge is referred to in various spiritual traditions
as awakening, enlightenment, self-realisation, salvation, illumination, liberation, satori, nirvana, moksha, bodhi or
prajna.

However, these terms tend to confer a degree of the exotic or the unfamiliar on our direct, intimate knowledge of our
self, whereas in fact nothing could be less extraordinary than the knowing of our own being.

For a mind that is accustomed to giving its attention exclusively to objective experience, this non-objective
recognition may trigger waves of profound relaxation in the mind or the body, in which the knots and contractions
that have accumulated over a lifetime are released.

The release of these tensions may precipitate unusual effects in the mind or the body, but such external signs should
not be confused, as they often are, with the simple recognition of our own being.

Alternatively, this recognition may happen so quietly that the mind may not even notice the transition that has taken
place over some time.

When the Zen teacher Shunryu Suzuki was once asked why he never referred to his enlightenment experience, his
wife, who was sitting at the back of the hall, stood up and said, ‘Because he never had one!’ The recognition of our
true nature is not an exotic experience. Indeed, it is not an experience at all.

In this recognition, our essential, irreducible, self-aware being simply loses its apparent limitations and its reality
stands revealed: open, transparent, luminous, indestructible, unborn and undying.

When such a mind rises again from the heart of awareness and ventures out into the realm of objective experience, it
does so, as Wordsworth said, ‘trailing clouds of glory’.

That is, it rises from awareness still saturated with the imperturbable peace and causeless joy that are the essential
qualities of awareness, and makes these qualities available to humanity.
 CHAPTER 8

THE OCEAN OF AWARENESS

I
f awareness were likened to an ocean, thoughts would be the waves that play on the surface and feelings the
currents that flow within it. Just as all there is to the waves and currents is the movement or activity of the
ocean, so all there is to the mind is the motion or activity of awareness.

It is always still in the depths of the ocean; likewise, the heart of awareness is always silent and at peace.

For this reason, all the mind has to do to find the peace for which it longs is to sink into the heart of awareness. As
Rumi said, ‘Flow down and down in ever-widening rings of being.’*

As a wave or current flows ‘down and down’ into the depths of the ocean, it loses its agitation and ‘widens’ until at
some point it comes to rest. Having no activity or motion there, the wave or current has lost its form and, as a result,
its limitations.

The wave and the current do not disappear. They never existed in their own right to begin with. The wave and the
current are simply the movement of water.

The water doesn’t appear when the waves and currents appear, and it doesn’t disappear when they subside. Nothing
new comes into existence when the wave and current appear, and nothing is removed from existence when they
disappear.

Likewise, as the mind sinks progressively into its essence it quietens and expands – that is, it is divested of all that is
finite, conditioned or limited within it – and stands revealed to itself as its essential, irreducible essence: clear,
luminous, silent awareness.

When the waves of the mind rise in the form of thoughts, images, feelings, sensations and perceptions, nothing new
appears, and when they subside, nothing real disappears.

As it says in Chapter 2, verse 20 of the Bhagavad Gita, ‘That which is never ceases to be; that which is not never
comes into existence.’

Just as the waves that play on the surface of the ocean and the currents that flow within it are only the formless water
moving within itself, so all thinking, imagining, feeling, sensing and perceiving are only awareness vibrating within
itself, appearing to itself as the multiplicity and diversity of objective experience, but never ceasing to be or know
anything other than itself.

Each of our minds is an apparent limitation of infinite awareness. Just as a wave or current gives the formless ocean
a temporary appearance, so each of our minds gives unlimited awareness a provisional limit, and thus a temporary
name and form.

The finite mind is the activity that infinite awareness freely assumes in order to bring manifestation into apparent
existence. In assuming the form of the finite mind, infinite awareness seems to limit itself and, as such, becomes a
separate subject of experience, from whose point of view it is able to know itself as a separate object, other or world.
Meditation is the reversal of this process. When the activity of the finite mind subsides, nothing happens to
awareness; it simply loses a temporary name and form.

It is for this reason that in the Tantric tradition of Kashmir Shaivism it is said that the path by which we fall is the
path by which we climb. The pathway through which infinite awareness assumes the form of the finite mind is the
same pathway, traversed in the opposite direction, through which the finite mind loses its limitations and stands
revealed as infinite awareness.

In doing so it is gradually, in most cases, but occasionally suddenly, divested of the limitations that it freely assumed
in the first place in order to manifest creation.

The Direct Path – the pathless path of self-investigation, self-abidance or self-surrender – is the means by which the
finite mind is divested of its freely assumed limitations until its essential, irreducible, indivisible, indestructible and
imperturbable nature of pure awareness stands revealed to itself as it is.

At no point, either in the outward process of manifestation or the inward path of returning to its essence of infinite
awareness, does a finite mind ever come into existence in its own right.

There is no such entity as a finite mind or a separate self. A finite mind is the freely assumed activity of infinite
awareness, through which and as which awareness knows itself as the world. The finite mind is thus the agency of
God’s infinite being, never an entity in its own right.

There is only one reality – one infinite, indivisible, self-aware being with nothing in itself other than itself with
which it could be limited or from which it could be separated – from which all apparent objects and selves derive
their seeming existence.

Infinite awareness never ceases being infinite awareness in order to become a finite mind. It just colours itself with
its own activity and appears to limit itself. There is just awareness and the colouring of awareness but never the
absence of awareness, nor the existence of any other mind or self.

A wave cannot find peace and fulfilment in another wave. The only way for it to find lasting peace and fulfilment is
to sink into the depths of itself, thereby progressively losing its agitation.

Likewise, the only place in which an apparently separate self or finite mind can find lasting peace and fulfilment is
in the depths of its own being. The separate self or finite mind that longs for peace and fulfilment in objective
experience is like a current in the ocean in search of water.

Although the search for peace and fulfilment is temporarily alleviated by the acquisition of an object, substance,
activity, state of mind or relationship, it is never fully satisfied and, as a result, resurfaces as soon as the new
experience ceases or disappears.

It is only when the apparently separate self or finite mind dives deep within itself that it finds the rest, the peace and
the fulfilment for which it longs.

The finite mind or separate self is an illusion that is seemingly real only from its own illusory perspective. However,
this does not mean that the finite mind or separate self does not exist. It simply means that it is not what it appears to
be.

All illusions have a reality to them, and if we are experiencing an illusion we are, by definition, experiencing its
reality. It is not possible to watch a movie without seeing the screen.

The ‘I’ of the separate self is the true and only ‘I’ of infinite awareness, seemingly mixed with and, therefore,
apparently limited by the objective qualities of experience.

With this apparent limitation of awareness comes a limiting of the peace that is inherent within it. It is for this reason
that the primary motivation of all apparently separate selves is to find peace or fulfilment.

The wound of separation that lives in the hearts of most people is an invitation from the heart of awareness, drawing
the mind inwards to the peace and fulfilment that live at its source and essence.

Just as attention or mind is awareness directed towards an object, so our longing or devotion is love directed towards
a person or god. And just as the peace and happiness which the mind desires live at the source of attention, never at
its destiny, so the love for which the heart longs resides at the origin of its longing, never in its fulfilment.

As such, our longing originates from and is made out of the very substance for which it longs. In the words of a
sixteenth-century Italian monk, ‘Lord, Thou art the love with which I love Thee.’

The returning of attention to its source is the essence of meditation; the dissolving of devotion or longing in its
origin is the heart of prayer.

The mind that seeks peace and happiness and the heart that longs for love must subside or dissolve in their essence.

We must die before we die.

In being aware of being aware, there is no room for a separate self. There is just eternal, infinite awareness, resting
in and as its own inherently peaceful, unconditionally fulfilled being…knowing, being and loving itself alone.

It is for this reason that Rumi said, ‘In the existence of your love, I become non-existent. This non-existence linked
to you is better than anything I ever found in existence.’

In being aware of being aware – the knowing of our own essential, irreducible being – the mind loses its agitation
and the heart is relieved of its yearning.

What remains cannot be given a name, for all names refer to the objects of knowledge and experience, and yet it is
that for which all minds seek and all hearts long.

* Translated by Coleman Barks.

 THE ESSENCE OF MEDITATION SERIES

The Essence of Meditation Series presents meditations on the essential, non-dual understanding that lies at the heart
of all the great religious and spiritual traditions, compiled from contemplations led by Rupert Spira at his meetings
and retreats. This simple, contemplative approach, which encourages a clear seeing of one’s experience rather than
any kind of effort or discipline, leads the reader to an experiential understanding of their own essential being and the
peace and fulfilment that are inherent within it.

Being Aware of Being Aware

Sahaja Publications & New Harbinger Publications 2017

 PUBLICATIONS BY RUPERT SPIRA

The Transparency of Things – Contemplating the Nature of Experience

Non-Duality Press 2008, Sahaja Publications & New Harbinger Publications 2016

Presence, Volume I – The Art of Peace and Happiness

Non-Duality Press 2011, Sahaja Publications & New Harbinger Publications 2016

Presence, Volume II – The Intimacy of All Experience

Non-Duality Press 2011, Sahaja Publications & New Harbinger Publications 2016

The Ashes of Love – Sayings on the Essence of Non-Duality

Non-Duality Press 2013, Sahaja Publications 2016

The Light of Pure Knowing – Thirty Meditations on the Essence of Non-Duality

Sahaja Publications 2014

Transparent Body, Luminous World – The Tantric Yoga of Sensation and Perception
Sahaja Publications 2016

The Nature of Consciousness – Essays on the Unity of Mind and Matter

Sahaja Publications & New Harbinger Publications 2017
www.rupertspira.com