Diad: I and Thou

Supposing I said to you that it possible to eliminate all negative value from your life, to live life freely and confidently, with only positive events. To know your self as perfect and invincible, and so to live your life as a kind of entertaining learning activity, with no concept of failure. Supposing I said that! What would you think?

Perhaps you already live that way, perhaps you would like to live that way, perhaps you believe it is impossible to live that way.

The Diad Training method is a reformulation of ancient wisdom and practices in order to reveal the truth about who we are, and so remove the false thinking and beliefs that are the cause of inner anxieties and insecurities.

In order to understand any given situation that we find our selves in, it can be helpful to simplify it into an equation, in this case we use I+O, where I is the Self or the Individual, and O is the object or whatever condition is occurring, the + sign indicates that the two values are in relationship.

Normal problem solving starts with analyzing the O value, seeing it as the cause of the suffering that we are experiencing (my job, my partner, my co workers etc). This is to assume that the value O is responsible for what precedes it in the equation, which is itself a problematic proposition, and would require a new analysis of each occurrence of the value O (job, partner, co workers etc)

A more enlightened view might be to analyze the + value, i.e the nature of the relationship we have to the presumed cause (job, partner etc). But this is futile because we quickly realize that we cannot understand + unless we also include the initial value I.

Diad training goes straight to understanding of the constant value I and tries to clarify its nature.

By varying the values of O in I+O, we find that O can signify anything, including our thoughts and emotions. We can reduce all our conscious experience into the terms I+O, including such terms as I+my life, or I+my problems. By so analyzing conscious experience we begin to grasp the strange fact that the value I, although always present, is mysteriously undefinable. In other words who we really are, that sense of being aware or being alive, is somehow apart from everything and anything, what is called the witness or the observer or the knower in traditional wisdom.

This means that the I is beyond qualities and change, perfect and unchanging. In Yoga this realization is called kaivalya or apart-ness. It leads to liberation from the changing states of the world.

The problem, the source of our problems, is that we do not see truly who we are, just as we cannot truly see our own face, or the the eye cannot look at itself, so the I does not see itself when engaged in living in the world, unless it takes a moment to stop and to think about how things are put together.

This is the ancient promise of Classical Yoga, revealing perfection and freedom as your true nature. How would you behave if you knew without doubt that you have nothing to fear, that life can bring you only learning and enjoyment?

If you can solve a spreadsheet, you can solve all life problems. Diad training gives you the tools to do so .

http://zensium.it/english/services/Diad.html

Raja Yoga- the way to the King

The most authoritative text on Yoga is the Yoga Sutras of Patanjali, in which is described a process of self liberation called Raja or Kingly Yoga. I always assumed it was called this because it was the most effective or complete of the various paths of Yoga, rather than it being the path most favored by Rajas or Indian kings. However I have recently arrived at a very different understanding: Raja Yoga is the path of revealing the King or the born leader within each and every human being.

The way of Raja Yoga involves purifying and pacifying practices that lead to integration of mind breath and body. It also involves detailed study or self inquiry as to the nature of experience and who we are. The third part of Raja Yoga is the development of acceptance leading to faith in the way things are, an openness of the heart if you like.

Raja yoga seeks to make clear the existence of an aspect of ourselves which is normally hidden and yet of supreme importance, in fact it seeks to make clear who we actually are, rather than who we think we are. This may be explained by a parable of a city state in which the King or Queen, the sovereign, has fallen into a kind of incapacitated condition. Although the sovereign is still the source of all power in the state , effective functioning and day to day matters have been assumed by two lesser entities, the Head of the Armed forces and the Minister of Public Affairs. These two, each in accordance with their strict duties and responsibilities, yet sensing the danger and critical nature of the sovereigns incapacity or abdication of responsibility, have no option but to prepare for the worst. Only the royal born sovereign has the vision and the authority to restore order and ensure a peaceful and powerful reign, the others are mere functionaries, and have no real existence or authority. In everyday terms the two overworked and anxiety ridden ministers are the body and the mind, the sovereign is the essence or the Self, or what might be called the Soul.

Raja yoga seeks to isolate the Sovereign from the continuous clamor of the ministers, and slowly reactivate the Royal powers of governance, first by concentrating on simple objects so that the sovereign becomes aware of his/her own nature. As the royal essence slowly wakes up to its condition and responsibilities, it is given full dominance over the body and the mind, and eventually over all its subjects.

Royalty, true natural royalty is gifted with innate wisdom and peaceful power. All discord in human lives is a result of the absence of this natural wisdom and power, that seeks nothing for itself, as it knows that it is the source of all things.

Raja yoga seeks to awaken the King or Queen that is who you really are , when that occurs, fear, discord and want vanish from the land and peaceful productive relations are ensured.

In the world of human resources and leadership, nearly everyone is seeking to convince one of the two ministers to assume the role of the sovereign, to achieve Leadership by acquisitions of this or that trait or capacity. From the point of view of Raja Yoga, this is a consensus of ministers on how best to govern in the absence of the true sovereign, for the ministers themselves have no idea how to wake the sovereign up from his/her semi-wakeful state. Only the sovereign can truly govern peacefully and with natural power and authority accepted by all.

We can each be sovereign over our lives, no matter what the circumstances, it is a natural state that we have lost and can be regained. Whatever our material or mental circumstances, we can wake up to our royal nature and begin to act like a true king or a queen, who understands that all power stems from their self nature and so has no need to seek power over others, in fact our concern becomes that of waking up all other slumbering kings and queens so that the whole planet is inhabited by true and natural royalty, wise and knowing beings, aware of their own true nature

The Intelligent Compassionate Universe

Its been a long time since my last blog, I have been active on other platforms like LinkedIn and FB, but now this seems like the time to return to my blog.

I live and breath as part of the ICU, the I See You, the Intelligent Compassionate Universe.

As one lifts the veils that imprison our understanding, masquerading as Truth and knowledge, one finds oneself dissolving into nothingness. At the same time one expands into everythingness. As distinctions dissappear there is no longer an “I” that is separate from the “not I”, yet of course there is still a particular point of view, a means of interacting with reality. The whole life event appears as a dream, I am being dreamt, along with my dream body , my dream senses and my dream experiences. Everything I experience is part of that dream, and just like our beloved shrinks like to tell us, dreams have meaning. This universe has meaning, it is conscious.

It is no import in a dream to make things appear just as they are needed, time and space are just convenient tricks to keep things separate. That knowing entity that I identify as me, is just as present in every other thing, just as I am present in everything that I dream, it is all consciousness.

This is just how things are, “matter is consciousness” Sri Nisaragatta Maharaj says.

The universe is Intelligent and it is active in trying to help you wake up, to suffer less, it is compassionate, it sees you, I see you, ICU!

This is love.

From big bang to now this process of billions of years is just a few moments in the dream of the Divine. I , You and everything else are just bits of dreamstuff in the mind of the divine, so we are also divine in our nature.

If you use your mind to understand your experience, you will see that this is so.

 

Advanced Yoga is……..

I IT I IS IT NOT I NOT IT

There is only the in-between

 

A short video explaining why duality is a false view, using a piece of string as an example.

The Only Thing Worth Knowing

Ripples of the ocean

B0007851 Neuronal synapses Credit: Emily Evans. Wellcome Images images@wellcome.ac.uk http://images.wellcome.ac.uk

 

Bewildered is the Yogi who has broken the bonds of ignorance
Lost , to himself and others
He threw  the illusion of self existence into the boiling cauldron of truth and was consumed by  Brahman
Now he goes back and forth
asking strangers  for his head
Happiness and suffering
Are beyond him
He is lost in truth
Yet he loves you
Lost to him self
You are all he has

4 states
Elemental state: life on earth,
caught in the play of elements, life is a struggle to achieve security and an obsession with the personal: desire, pleasure, avoidance of pain etc this obsession obscures the existence of the solar self just as the clouds obscure the existence of the Sun

Solar self: leaving earth
Rising as it where above the elements, into the ever present light. A condition of safety and independence, the self is light. This is the blissful discovery of the Self, as the sun is the cause of life on earth yet is totally detached from it so the Self is the cause of life yet detached from it, splendid isolation !

Cosmic self : space travel
Expanding into this realm the solar self recedes to insignificance . All qualities become also insignificant, this state is characterized by the absence of interest in the condition of the personal self, it is of no account.  Everything is the same , existence and non existence are of no account. In this state one does not recognize oneself, is lost in truth.

Natural human : returning to earth
The cosmic, solar and elemental selves co exist in harmony, life is understood and accepted, no distinctions are made between human and nature, human and divine, divine and nature. This is the end of enlightenment with the destruction of mind and the triumph of nature or the body. This is a state of absolute normality based around life on earth and nature, identity is regained, there is no other and it is all sacred, the universal and the particular are the same.

Paradise is all around us, only our mind prevents us from seeing it. Life is Light, we are all enlightened, yet ask a fish if the ocean s wet and it does not know what you are talking about.

The closer you are to truth, and you are truth, the less you are .

There is only one option , to burn or to freeze

Two questions are important: who are you? Where do you come from?
To the first I say you are consciousness and only that. To the second I say go forward not back ‘

The whole problem arises from the development of symbolic or conceptual language and the manipulation of psychic objects without recourse to a natural standard, in other words abstract thought. Spiritual progress is the exploration of thought within thought , the concept of Self seeks its validation in thought and finds that it has none, so Self is extinguished as a concept. What remains is the body and it is recognized as possessing all the qualities of the spiritual or transcendent life, man the conscious animal lives in paradise in harmony with all.

The brain creates thought which is the manipulation of symbols in the mind. Thought conceives its own self as an object in thought and inquires as to the nature of the self

The monkey stood up and became man. vapours drifted upwards and concentrated in mans head instead of along his spine, whilst denser energies sank into his bowels, creating a polarity .Upright man saw himself orthogonal to the ground and his hyper energized mind conceived himself as special, as somehow free from the earth his mother, closer to the sky. The intense energetic charge in his head facilitated the growth in consciousness and language. The world became the word. Yet this consciousness is only the elaboration of memory and the abstraction of natural impressions, it is an image of nature .

The ground state of being is nature itself, the body, the ground.

The true spiritual field is overgrown with the weeds of thought . These weeds in turn constitute all that is known of the spiritual field, stifling all growth

Memory facilitates the objectification of the world, as a thought object. In the absence of memory, which is mind, there is no objectification, hence no subject, all is a dynamic unity. Thought creates the illusion of the perceiver and the perceived, in truth there is only perception which is the locus of reality.

You think you are a wave in the ocean, you are not even a drop. At most you are a bit of froth brought forth as waves collide, a side effect of reality. In that tiny bubble of froth reality is reflected and has caught your attention, and so also your life. All that you think feel and experience is in the surface of that bubble, time and space and the whole of life. But you are not there, you are not in the bubble. you are the ocean that becomes the wave which produces the bubble. That is how you know that you are alive, you observe the shiny changing surface of the bubble, which is your mind, and have the experience of life, but that which experiences is beyond mind, it is the ocean, the sky, consciousness itself. Not mine, not yours, not here not there , it is everything , and you are that. What you see on the surface of the bubble is not yourself, but the reflection of yourself.
I can say that I am in all things, that I am in the heart of all people, that I  am everywhere, because when I say I , I refer to my true self, not my individual personality.

No Entanglement: Reflections from a mirror without a surface

No entanglement

Disentanglement

No action

No actor

No perception

No perceiver

No perceived

No duality!

Duality is a concept born out of error. The error of separation, conceived by language. In the beginning was the word , yes at the beginning of time is the concept of time, yet what has no beginning and no end is not the word, it cannot be shown explained pointed at. It is that in which all things have their origin, yet it has no origin. The Tao that can be named is not the real Tao.

I is the illegitimate child born of the word and that which comprehends the word . Yet the search of the bastard offspring for its parents is life itself.
This world is like a dream, the I is like a dream. That is the knowing of this life. The dreamer is dreaming I and I dream the world . In the dream I am gifted with knowledge, an artifact of the dream, that knowledge allows understanding that life is a dream, that I am a dream . That is all.

No bondage No liberation

Can we rely on reason to find the truth? Yes, because “truth” is by definition reasonable.
1+1=2 is true and reasonable. Truth is that which is  revealed through reason.
If we examine experience we find that it reveals our inability to know anything beyond what is created in the black box of our minds. Therefore all our ideas and perceptions of an “outer” reality are un reasonable, we cannot know whether it exists or what it is like actually. Furthermore we must recognize that what we have taken to be true is not necessarily so. We must also admit that our minds somehow create the appearance of an outer reality. We must so admit that time, space, light, dark ,matter and non matter alike is the stuff of mind, life is mind.
Within this mind scape of mind is an entity called “I” . The “I” is self knowing or self conscious, yet it is an artifact of mind just like everything else. Mistaking itself to be separate in kind from the mind scape it creates the delusion of separation or duality.

No relationship
All relationship presupposes duality, when duality is realized as false there  is no more relationship.

All is consciousness
To the extent that God is defined by thought then God is consciousness , yet God is beyond definition . One can realize that one is a part of that being identified as God, but true knowledge of God belongs to God alone, so I agree with those who say ” not this, not this” and leave it at that.

The sky is not blue, the sky is blue
From a first view we all know the sky is blue, then we realize that the color blue is an artifact of mind, colors are not real, they are the way our mind interprets frequencies. So, the sun is not yellow either. If the sun is not a bright circle in a blue sky then has anyone ever seen the sun? Of course we have all seen the sun, only it has its entire existence in our mind. The world is imagination, matter IS consciousness . So the sky is blue after all.

No perception there is no subject object duality , no other. This is truth

The identification with the body as the self is the cause of suffering. Body includes brain, grey matter. The body is the conveyor of experience to the self, pleasure and pain are body sensations like light and dark? If we cut a carrot we do not feel pain, yet the carrot is never the less a part of our conscious experience like the body, just because it is not connected to our nervous system on the same way doesn’t exclude it from being  a part of what we experience ourselves to be. All experience is the self,  No experience s the self.

The waves tell the same story as the ant, the birds on the trees, the clouds and the moon even, the breath in my body sings an eternal ballad of love.

“Look not at the mountain but what contains the mountain, said the old hermit. “Space” I replied,  “and what contains space?” He asked smiling.

I came across the one who meditates in deep space, one half of his face was frozen white, the other half burnt black, down the middle was a seam of pure gold as fine as a hair . Dropping my body to the ground I entered the seam, inside was a land such as paradise must be. Sitting on a round stone I found a golden baby, “who are you and where am I? ” I asked, “sshhh..,” said the baby “close your eyes and do not think”, I did so and fell back into the waking state, the old mountain hermit was stirring the tea and singing.

No shame in suffering
No lesser value
Although much suffering arises from the identification with the body, this is natural , part of the process of life and should not be denied. Identification with the body is identification with the world, this is absolutely necessary. This world is created in order to be understood , the process of entanglement and disentanglement is the very means by which we come to understanding.

Do not seek the truth, but the error. Once you have found the error, truth is evident .

Spiritual progression is actually only the elimination of error or misunderstanding. It is the correction of pathological perception. It is the removal of artifacts which impede true perception, the first to arise and the last to be removed is the belief in the “I” as the separate self. This I is a magnet which attracts all the other pathological artifacts. The origin of the I is the body and its senses and nervous system. This identification is natural and correct, the pathological aspect is the implicit identification of non body as not I. So the root is the division of the world into I not I. This contraction is caused by fear and is the cause of suffering. This fear is a natural reaction to being born and cannot be avoided, what we can do is realize its pathological effects and take action to mitigate or cure ourselves of it. This means the realization that all is I, there is no separation, the identification with the body is extended to all things. This is the birth of the universal or cosmic self and results as the end point of inquiry into the nature of experience and perception(jnana yoga) or the experience of no thought (raja yoga) or the complete submission to Divinity. (Bhakti yoga)

Individual self/ solar self/ cosmic self: Divine Self (truth)

The Divine Self is the final understanding of Reality and Truth, it is the return home of the wayward and misguided individual and the realization the we never left home! The best analogy is waking  up from a dream. We are artifacts in Gods dream.

Pleasure contains a secret,

As long as we are alive we will be subject to the elements, as long as we identify with the elements we will experience change and so  suffering. What is suffering but the mistaken identification of  Self and non self.
Error is the cause of suffering and suffering is the sign of error. Through suffering we come to recognize error.
The Self or Soul is built in to the very act of knowing. Knowledge, starting from I am, is only possible due to the existence of the soul. In the act of knowing both the world and the soul are created
.
Yoga is emptiness
Asana is to make body dissapear
Pranayama is to make breath disappear
Dharana is to make thought dissapear
Dhyana is to make self dissapear
Samadhi is what abides in what remains

Whatever is present in consciousness is self, subject and object are identical. All is I. This is kaivalya alone to al one, this is realization. I am that.

The transcendent self is merely the hard disk upon which the life code is stored. There is no knowledge without code, so mind cannot know the transcendent self, but it can infer and sense it’s presence. This leads to a liberation of mind from mind . This is not a realist view in that it does not lead to a view if reality out there, knowable or not. Code is code, perhaps self written perhaps written by some other entity perhaps eternal and ever present. So mind is not an interpretation of an unknown reality. At the same time it is not an ideal view, there is no reason to believe that mind is all there is, that all is consciousness , there can be no transcending the mind and still retain knowledge
The categories of reality (earth,water,fire, air, space, mind) are all code. Consciousness itself is a type of code which when written on to the hard disk, produces the other categories, it is a code writing code.

There us no such thing as “in your head”. Thoughts exist in the same way as objects. Objects are not thoughts, but they are a manifestation of consciousness , the dream reality .
In the dream reality everything is made of mind stuff.
Do what is the result of this realization? What is the practical effect on how one behaves?

The desire to transcend suffering is the desire to escape life, suffering is in the nature of life as everything is always changing and the self seeks attachment.  Attachment to non attachment is folly, so one should embrace change whole heartedly. Desire will always be there as it is necessary for life. Embrace your desire, embrace your suffering, it is part of you, do not deny anything for you are everything. Remember your three states: the earth state, the solar state, the cosmic state

There is no separation, it is not possible to be conscious OF something, the object IS consciousness , there is no subject without object and vice versa they are mistakes caused by ignorance. The object is the subject .

After swallowing the sun and allowing it warm your insides a little , but before getting comfy , please think about this: the light bulb is an image in your head, everything is , correct? No head, no light, obvious. Not! What do you mean b head or brain, instead of looking at a light bulb and realizing it exists in your mind, why not go and look at your own neurons, isn’t it the same. Your head is not more real than the light bulb. There is no such thing as “in your head” or an optic nerve or a vision centre in your brain, all you know about your brain is what is conveyed by your nervous system. Just as reality is a mysterious event in your mind, so is the idea that you have a body or a brain. There is no reason to think that you have any more existence that the light bulb, there is no IN and no Out, the idea that the light of the bulb stimulates nerves in your brain and causes “you” to “see” is nonsense. All you can say is that everything is consciousness and leave it at that!

This is called spitting the sun out.

Those without goodness extol the power of goodness, those who know not truth speak of truth,

The final end of practice is right action, right action can only come about by right thought, right thought can only come about by right perception, right perception can only come about by right practice, which are purification or self inquiry or faith . Purification occurs through disciplined and constant practice and involves physical and mental exercise, asana, pranayama, concentration, contemplation. Self inquiry is the ruthless pursuit f the answer to the question “who am I?” Not giving up until the answer is achieved which is beyond doubt and error, faith is the wholehearted belief in divine providence, the certainty of Gods infallibility and responsibility for what occurs. these three modes, emphasizing body, mind, heart respectively are the keys to happiness,

realization is a progressive process of losing ones center. It is about becoming less, not more. This means that one becomes less concerned with ones own state, as one identifies with an ever larger context of self the particular thoughts/emotions/experiences of the individual are less important. The mlittle self is seen for what it is, a local event in a universal field. So at the same time it is a process of expansion, the small self dissolves into the big self.

All matter is energy, energy is consciousness. The universe is not different than your own self, matter is consciousness is you. This is the new paradigm , a revolution as great as the Discovery that the Earth is round, don’t be a flat earther.

Humanity is asleep, dreaming. This life is a dream, you are a dream. The proof of this and the means to wake up are everywhere, yet the dreamers are asleep so they do not realize, and continue to believe they are already awake. If you are convinced that you are already awake then it will not occur to you that you are dreaming. In reality it is not you dreaming, but the universal being, you are part of the dream of the supreme being.

Arianne de vos burchart

The watchers of the river
We gaze into the flow of time
And space
We are beyond
Gifted with awareness
Which we project
Into the flux
As fishers of experience

Trace your mind
Back to its source
You will find yourself
Here with us

Suffering is present in this world to stimulate awakening, the desire to escape suffering is the motive for the spiritual search. It is easier to awake from a bad dream than a pleasant one!

The universal self incarnates as individual self. The individual self creates the world yet retains a memory of its origin in the universal self. This memory of a primordial undifferentiated state is the prime motive force in life, being the source of the search for happiness, yet the terrestrial qualities are subject to time and change and so where life is conceived as being subject to time and space it is bound to be based on error. Only when this life is conceived as symbolic or representational can the search for origin be successful.

5 stages of realization

1. Confusion : self is identified with nature, usual state today
2. Clarification: Self is recognized as separate from nature, self realization (this state is charecterized by the happiness of the one who realizes s/he is free, safe in the transcendent self, bondage has been escaped from.
3. Union: nature is recognized as being Self ( you are that)
4. Dissolution : self is understood as illusion (all is that) this state is characterized by bewilderment, the yogi is lost, there is no self left on which to project states or statements such as I am, helpless , the yogi accepts what is.

It is clear that the whole process is one of the maturation of  understanding. In other words spiritual growth is the adaptation of understanding with reality. There is no change of being, of what one is,  no progress except in that one is less ignorant, less in error. There is a  fundamental unity of knowledge and being , to know is to be. So the increase in knowledge, which is understanding of truth, is an increase in being. Being is not to be thought of as a kind of rarefied state of matter, it is not part of what we call existence. Rather the opposite is true, existence is an expression of being , being itself, truth, is consciousness, existence is the dance of consciousness and enlightenment is understanding the dance.

Embrace your suffering, love your failure. You do not know how life will turn out, you do not control life, but you can choose to love your life, in all its complexity.All experience occurs only as a Unity, the division of experience into subject and object with the intervening act of experiencing, occurs as result of thought which is the mental re enactment of the experience, on this re enactment the subject seemingly has its existence, but it is pure thought about experience and not experience itself.  In the apparent independence of thought lies the belief in the subject object duality. Yet thought itself is another form of experience or creative act whereby a “thinker” appears to exist. In reality there are only various modes of experience or creativity where all is contained.

The sun reflected on the surface of the water can be as bright as the sun itself. Yet the sun itself is merely a reflection on the surface of your mind.enactment of the experience, on this re enactment the subject seemingly has its existence, but it is pure thought ABout experience and not experience itself.  In the apparent independence of thought lies the belief in the subject object duality. Yet thought itself is another form of experience or creative act whereby a “thinker” appears to exist. In reality there are only various modes of experience or creativity where all is contained.

The sun reflected on the surface of the water can be as bright as the sun itself. Yet the sun itself is merely a reflection on the surface of your mind.

The four stages of realization

Realization can be thought of as the progressive removal of the layers of ignorance, in order to realize what is the ever present truth. I present 4 stages in which this occurs:

Stage 1: Confusion

This is the normal point of view of most people today. It is the materialistic scientific view that has no place for soul or anything that cannot be weighed or measured. Reality according to this view is basically physics, human beings are evolved animals that  have managed to become conscious through the complexity of the brain. It is a view characterized by a complete inability to explain what Life is, and a remarkable ability to ignore this obvious failing. At the most life is explained as something that “just happens”, you are born, you die, make the most of it. It has come about by the failure to analyse consciousness itself and instead to concentrate only on the contents of consciousness such as thought, experience and emotion. The confusion which results is that the true nature of the human being passes unseen.

2. Clarification

From confusion we can obtain some clarity. Through spiritual practice, or insight or self inquiry, we realize that what we are is consciousness, a kind of observer of the world. We understand why we say “I have a thought” and not “I am a thought”. We begin to understand that behind all experience is an experiencer. We begin to realize what it means to be able to say “I am”.  This may be likened to the discovery of the Soul, or transcendent aspect of identity, and is an understanding shared by most religions. One realizes that time and space are experiences, and that which experiences them is to a certain extent beyond them, in the same way that in order to experience a show, the spectator has to be somewhat removed from the stage. It is a state characterized by a feeling of essential freedom and security.

3. Union

The third stage occurs when one realizes that even though one is essentially a transcendent being, as it where materialized on earth, the true nature of everything is that it is also part of what one is. The duality of Transcendent Self and World is revealed as false. The world is the self and vice versa, there is no subject-object duality, everything is consciousness and consciousness is Self. There is no separation. This third state is actually similar to the confusion of the first state, except Reality is not matter and time and space, but consciousness, physics is mind. This is true because there is no aspect of life that is not also present to consciousness, and its complete existence is only as it occurs as consciousness.

4. Dissolution

The final stage or realization is when the self further realizes that it is itself only an aspect of a greater and unknowable reality. That whatever a person can know is still limited due to the inherent limitation of being a knower, of having any identity at all. This is the stage of saying “I am not”. At this point one is freed from all concern for personal salvation or happiness and lapses back into a kind of divine ignorance. This is the mystical stage of union with the absolute and represents the realization of only truth that has always been the case.

These stages are not some kind of transformation of the human being into something else. Each and every one of us is in this same state of union with the absolute, if we would only know it.