The study of awareness is a great study. “I am aware.” The key to this entire study is the discovery of who or what is the “I am.” It is the key to the totality of your progress on the path of enlightenment. What is awareness? As you open your physical eyes, what is it that is aware of what you see? When you look within, deep within, and feel energy, you almost begin to see energy. A little more perception comes, and you do actually see energy, as clearly as you see chairs and tables with your physical eyes open.§
But what is it that is aware? When awareness moves through superconsciousness, it seems to expand, for it looks out into the vastness of superconsciousness from within and identifies with that vastness. This is what is meant by an expanded state of awareness. What is awareness? Discover that. Go deep within it. Make it a great study. You have to discover what awareness is before you can realize the Self God. Otherwise, realization of the Self God is only a philosophy to you. It is a good philosophy, however, a satisfying and stable philosophy. But philosophies of life are not to be intellectually learned, memorized and repeated and nothing more. They are to be experienced, step by step by step. Get acquainted with yourself as being awareness. Say to yourself, “I am awareness. I am aware. I am not the body. I am not the emotions. I am not the thinking mind. I am pure awareness.”§
It will help for us to make a mental picture. Let us now try to visualize awareness as a round, white ball of light, like one single eye. This ball is being propelled through many areas of the mind, inner and outer, and it is registering all the various pictures. It has, in fact, four eyes, one on each side of it. It is not reacting. The reaction comes when awareness is aware of the astral body and the physical body. It is in those bodies that reaction occurs. We are aware of the reactions in these bodies, for the physical body and the astral body are also part of the vast, vast universe of the mind.§
Each individual awareness, ball of light, is encased in many bodies. The first and nearest encasement is the body of the soul. The second encasement is the astral, or intellectual-emotional, body. The third encasement is the physical body. The radiation from awareness, this ball of light, is the aura. Awareness is an extension of prana from the central source, issuing energy.§
Energy goes where awareness flows. When awareness focuses on relationships, relationships flow. When awareness focuses on philosophy, that unfolds itself. Ultimately, when awareness focuses on itself, it dissolves into its own essence. Energy flows where awareness goes. I was always taught that if one foot was injured, for example, to focus on the other foot and transfer the healthy prana from that foot to the ailing foot.§
Awareness Finds a New Home§
Needless to say, the Self does not mean the realization of your personality. Some people think that this is what Self Realization means. “I want Self Realization,” they say, thinking all the time it means, “I want to realize that I am an individual and not dependent upon my parents. I want Self Realization.” Other people feel it means, “I want to realize my artistic abilities and be able to create.” It does not mean that at all. All this is of external consciousness, the intellectual area of the mind. It is a lesser form of self realization. Self Realization is finding That which is beyond even superconsciousness itself, beyond the mind—timeless, causeless, spaceless.§
After Self Realization, awareness has a new home. It does not relate to the external mind anymore in the same way. It relates to the Self God, Parasiva, as home base and flows out into the various layers of the mind, and in again. Before Self Realization, awareness was in the external mind trying to penetrate the inner depths. Then it would return to the external mind and again try to penetrate the within through the processes of meditation. After Self Realization, the whole process of the flow of awareness is reversed.§
Mind and consciousness are synonymous. Awareness is man’s individual spiritual being, the pure intelligence of his spiritual body, flowing through this vast universe of the mind. We want to be able to flow awareness through any area of the mind consciously, at will, as we go in and in and in toward our great realization of the Self God, which is beyond mind, beyond time, beyond consciousness, beyond all form. Yet, it is not an unconscious state. It is the essence of all being, the power which makes the electricity that flows through the wire that lights the light that illumines the room. When we sit, simply being aware of being aware, the currents of the body harmonized, the aura turns to streaks of light dashing out into the room, and we are sitting in our own perfect bliss, simply aware, intensely aware, of being aware. Awareness itself then turns in on itself enough to experience, to become, the Self God—That which everyone is seeking.§
That is the sum total of the path. That is the path that you are on. That is the experience that if you keep striving you will have in this life, even if it is at the point of death. It is then you will reincarnate as a great teacher on the planet and help many others through to the same goal. For there is no death and there is no birth for the immortal body of the soul that you are, that pure intelligence that goes on and on and on and on and on and on. So go in and in and in and in and in and in. Arrive at the ultimate goal. Make it your journey, your quest. Want it more than life itself.§
Generally our greatest fear is death. Why? Because it is the most dramatic experience we have ever had in any one lifetime. Therefore we fear it. We are in awe of death. It is so dramatic that we do not remember, really, what happened during part of the experience, though occasionally some people do. However, the body of the soul knows no birth, knows no death. It goes on and on and on, and its awareness goes in and in and in to its ultimate goal—awareness of itself turned so much in on itself that it dissolves in the very essence of Being, as it merges in Siva. You cannot say anything more about the Self, because to describe the Self adequately there are no words. It is beyond time, form, cause, mind. And words only describe time, cause and mind consciousness, which is form. You have to experience It to know It. And by experiencing It, you do know It.§
Cognizantability, Aphorism 48§
Attachment is of the reasoning plane. Therefore, all attachments must be given up subconsciously, through understanding, before the Ego can go beyond the conscious mind. The conscious mind can be controlled through concentration, which leads into meditation (after the physical body has been stilled). This then unfolds into a state of contemplation, and finally the Self, spirit, Truth, or samadhi, is realized.§
Commentary: This aphorism means we must have faith in the future, faith in ourselves, faith in others. To truly give up attachment, we must be confident in our own personal powers of creation, lest we always be hanging on to the past—things, people and the ideas within it. The future is to be remembered and created just the way the divine forces working through us, from Lord Siva Himself to the physical plane, will it to be. For nothing can happen but through His grace. Lord Ganesha has opened the door for this knowledge to bloom. We in turn must unreservedly prostrate ourselves in complete abandon before the Supreme God of all the Gods in order to, as the aphorism states, unfold into states of contemplation, and finally the “Self—spirit, truth or samadhi—is realized,” our true eternal Sivaness.§
