Pay close attention to the following. Do it yourself as you read.

When you are aware of any object in front of you or in your mind's eye, there are always two factors in operation. First there is the object. Secondly there is who or what is aware of the object.

You could call these the object and the subject, the "it" and the "I."

Who or what is AWARE of the object cannot ever be an object itself. An object is what you are aware OF, not the awareness.

An object can never be awareness. It is always what is presented TO awareness, like images are presented on a screen to an audience in a movie theater.

So, if you who are aware of objects are not an object, and can never be, who or what are you? You are not an object, you are not a thing, you are no thing. You are pure, simple awareness, which is no-thing-ness. Your ordinary, everyday awareness, distinct from all objects of awareness, is this.

 
 

If you followed the above inquiry in your own awareness and understanding you are now self-realized. You now know that you are not an object, never were, never will be, and cannot ever be under any circumstances. You now know that you are, and you live in, that ultimate freedom of no-thing-ness.

 

The only reason we don't ordinarily realize this is that our ordinary everyday awareness is generally always totally engaged with objects of awareness, and we do not have the guidance nor the opportunity to make the above discrimination. Even after making the above discrimination our awareness is still totally engaged with objects. The only difference is that we now realize awareness in itself for what it is. This is an important realization. In fact, it is the ultimate realization - the realization of the ultimate Self beyond all conditions and circumstances, existing in total freedom. This realization will have natural and spontaneous effects in your consciousness and life. (This will be explained below.)



But why do we call Pure Awareness "Self?"  Why do we identify it with what we call "I?"

Because when we look inside for what we call "I" what we find is that the most basic thing that we mean by that is the "me being aware" of something. That "me being aware" is awareness. When taken by itself, without objects of awareness, it is Pure Awareness.

Someday, perhaps when you fall into a kind of slumber and the outside world starts to fade into the background, you will find yourself alone in pure awareness - no objects, no world. You might have previously thought that you would have disappeared too, that this was annihilation, but you find that "you" are still there. Then you will know for sure who "I" really is. When you come back to the world you will look on it with a new "I."


Pure simple awareness, no-thing-ness, is the True Self, the Self that is not a content of consciousness, not just an experience among other experiences.

You ARE that Absolute Self beyond all circumstances and conditions. You ALWAYS were, but didn't know it, hadn't yet realized it.

THIS IS NOT EXTRAORDINARY!!!  IT IS THE MOST BASIC CONDITION OF LIFE AS A HUMAN BEING - THE ORDINARY EVERYDAY AWARENESS THAT IS MOST BASICALLY YOU.

THE ABSOLUTE ULTIMATE SELF IS YOUR COMMON ORDINARY EVERYDAY AWARENESS, KNOWN AS SUCH WHEN YOU DISTINGUISH IT OFF FROM ALL OBJECTS OF THAT AWARENESS.

Again, just to get it through loud and clear:

IT IS YOUR COMMON ORDINARY EVERYDAY AWARENESS!! IT IS WHO YOU ARE AND ALWAYS HAVE BEEN, ALL THE TIME IN YOUR ORDINARY LIFE LOST IN OBJECTS AND EXPERIENCES!!

Now you know!! Now you see it for what it is. Now you realize!

The most simple everyday awareness that you already always have is the Ultimate True Self - when known for itself, by itself, in itself!!

Depending on where you are coming from, the realization of Nothingness may seem like either

a. an impossible dream beyond attainment for anyone but yogis, meditation masters, mystics or special gifted ones, or

b. a ludicrous concept that has neither reality nor any practical value.

In fact, simple pure awareness, no-thing-ness,  is already with you, already "in" you right now. It is as close as the man's glasses that he searched for all over the place when they were on his head.

All the talk and teachings, etc. from gurus, traditions, religions, spiritual practices, etc. about the Ultimate Self being some far-off attainment or some special state of consciousness that is difficult to get into, are all just basically wrong.

The only reason that the simplicity of Self has been missed, and therefore become a far-off image of the end of some difficult journey, is because it has been so close, so intimate, so much a fundamental everyday part of us that it is just taken for granted, not even noticed.

All that it really takes to realize the ultimate self of pure awareness, of beingness, of the most basic state of our existence, is to notice our everyday simple awareness. Because that is where it is, that is what it is. Realization is just to notice it, and recognize it for what it is.

If you didn't get it, that doesn't matter. It is just a demonstration. In DEPTH Dialogue this realization happens naturally and spontaneously simply as a result of doing the deep self-exploration. What happens is that as you observe and witness your experiences more and more you begin to notice that those experiences are NOT YOU. As you explore experiences of selfhood more and more you begin to realize that even those experiences of who you thought, felt and sensed you were, are NOT YOU.

At some point, without even hardly noticing it, you have come to just simply know that you are not any of the images, feelings and experiences that parade before your senses and your mind's eye.

Not only this, every round of DEPTH Dialogue self-exploration brings you to a shift and realization in your awareness and understanding, that is a real creative breakthrough from beyond anything you ever knew or experienced before. Realization "out of the blue." When this happens, the old mind is whited out, like when shadows disappear from a room when you turn on bright lights. This "whiting out" is pure awareness coming through too. The transcendent beingness, the pure free no-thing-ness is cracking through the crevices.

The levels of deep creative power and functioning that DEPTH Dialogue leads you to are stages in the integration of this total freedom of Nothingness into your experiential self, and your everyday bodily physiology, experience and life.

This doesn't happen all at once but as natural stages of development in your journey of deep self-exploration. One of the steps of this journey is realization of ecstatic transcendent levels of experiencing, which includes experiencing self as this kind of experience.

Further exploration and development reveals to you Self as Nothingness, and then the integration of that realization with self as transcendence and experience as ecstatic.

Just as there are levels of creative unfoldment, as presented in the previous section (Overview), along with this unfoldment, and an integral part of it, is unfoldment of realization of Self as no-thing-ness, as the ultimate freedom that results in the true complete ecstasy of being out of the prison of the seeming sufferings and limitations of existence.


Self-Realization Level I:  Creative Generativity

As you directly realize in your own experience that you are the one and only creator of your experiences, you also realize who the real you is, i.e. the no-thing-ness we have been referring to, that simple pure awareness that is aware of all those experiences that you are creating. You come to witness your experiences, including your experiential self,  more and more, as pure awareness vividly present along with objects and appearances, but apart from them, free and clear.

Self-Realization Level II: Spontaneous Generativity

As you realize that your creation of your experiences is a spontaneous dynamic flow beyond all technique, method, will or intentionality, you come to realize that seeming objects of your experience are more like fluid blends of energy or consciousness similar to currents in the ocean, rather than static blocks of stuff like statues. "Objects" in your awareness, including your experiential self,  become transparent to the subtle levels of your experiencing, in a sort of fluid hologram of ever-changing blends of the most basic elements of experiencing.

Self-Realization Level III: Dynamic Radiant Beingness

As you realize the unity of the deep quietness of Being with the full dynamism of all-powerful creative action, seeming "objects" of your attention, including the body, mind and experiential self, become transparent to awareness itself. That is, they are experienced as no-thing-ness also. The appearances of life do not disappear. They are merely experienced as having no substance or existence. Existence is seen to be an illusion, while appearances remain the same as ever.  What you thought and perceived to be existence in all things and experiences, you now realize clearly and experientially is nothingness. Nothing changes, everything changes.

The ancient analogy that illustrates this is that pottery is made from clay. The stuff of any given piece of pottery is not its particular shape or form, but the clay out of which it is made. So, the stuff of any given object, and of all objects, is now directly and clearly experienced no longer as an existence or substance, but as no-thing-ness, the same simple pure awareness that you are.

Self is realized as all there is, in everything that is.

There are not many selves.
There is not one Self.
There is ONLY Self.

Only lively pure awareness, dynamic radiant beingness, the "fertile void."  No-thing-ness as awareness recognizing itself in all the forms of appearances.

The whole of existence then becomes for you like one vast ever-changing fluid hologram that you can pass your hand right through, rather than like a thick, dense, seemingly solid statue that blocks off the space it occupies. In this analogy the "hand" is your conscious awareness, now passing without any resistance through all the shapes and forms of life, realizing that the statue-like thickness and denseness of seeming existence isn't there and never was. What really happens is that Self, Pure Awareness, which once was completely overshadowed by the forms of appearances, now becomes your foreground in consciousness while the forms of appearances recede to the background.

And this too happens in stages of development. First you start to experience the objects of the "far senses" in terms of Self. This means the objects of seeing, hearing, smelling, tasting, and touching outside objects. Gradually, after that, you start to experience the more intimate experiences you normally associate with your experiential selfhood in terms of Self. This means your internal representations of the far senses, such as thoughts, images and emotions, and then your internal sense of being touched, and your internal bodily sense (proprioception) that normally represents your most basic sense of experiential selfhood, i.e. how you feel yourself in your body. This latter stage is the thickest of the illusions of objective existence. It is your identification of self with the bodily sensations that give you your normal sense of being alive and being "you." Once this identification is loosened and dissolved, all illusions of Self or world being something other than Pure Awareness are gone, and you experience ultimate and absolute freedom.

So, again, Who are you really?

Is the experiential self that is an image in consciousness real? If Self as Nothingness is truly all that really is, how can the experiential self be real? How can ANY experience be real?

If the Absolute Self is sufficient unto itself, what function does experience have. Is it all mere illusion? Is it all just a mirage? Are we lunatics experiencing hallucinations?

Experiences appear so that pure awareness can be conscious of itself. Appearances are Self being aware of itself. Self as nothingness has no object to be aware OF. If there were no (seeming) objects present to awareness, Self would be like a person in deep dreamless sleep. It would be completely and utterly oblivious. It would be deeply asleep.

So, far from being hallucinations, apparent experiences are the aliveness of awareness to itself, creating out of itself in order to know itself. The substance of its creations - the whole world of appearances - is only itself, but in a form that can be reflected back to itself. Nothing seems to be something in order to be itself, i.e DYNAMIC ALIVE AWARENESS.

Pure Awareness is lively awareness awake to itself. It is not a static state of absolute being, oblivious to itself as if asleep. Self is no-thing-ness awake and alive to itself through the seeming forms of appearances in the world of experiences.

Full Self-realization is knowing that in yourself, i.e. knowing that you are pure awareness creating experiences out of yourself in order to be aware of yourself. Appearances ARE real! Experiences ARE real! But they are not what you have thought they were. You come to realize gradually in steps (as shown above) that they are just the creative play of you being you.

The good news, as stated as clearly as possible throughout this site, is that this ultimate freedom and fullest ecstasy is the true natural state of affairs for human beings. It is not an accomplishment but a natural level of normal human development. The only thing that has kept this from happening in recent times is the loss of true deep inwardly focused Socratic education. This is now again available, so that full self-realization, with all that results from that, is easily available to all.

It can't be emphasized too strongly that this is an educational process. It is as easy and as natural as learning your a-b-c's, your 1-2-3's or your p's and q's. Once this is known and accepted, self-realization won't be seen as unusual or exceptional. It ISN'T. It is just something to be learned. The deep inward Socratic way is the proven and effective way to learn this.