5 Crazy Statements?

An infant is born conscious, aware and experiencing, but without a sense of self. It takes a few months before the sense of self starts to develop. So I definitely wasn't born - I wasn't there.

This is not a trivial insight. Consciousness is primarily a function of the body, present at birth, so it certainly doesn't need the sense of self to exist. The sense of self, however, can only exist in consciousness.

This is the origin of the saying "you are not your body". The body comes first and provides a conscious host for the sense of self.

When the sense of self begins to develop it quickly floods consciousness and claims both it and the body as its own. Most adults will then never knowingly experience pure consciousness again.

The spiritual enquiry exercise described in this Brief Guide enables us to easily pause the sense of self and re-experience the original state of pure consciousness. I discovered that the regular experience of pure consciousness leads directly to the development of inner peace and happiness.

Pure consciousness has been considered to be a significant spiritual experience for millennia. Patanjali wrote about it 2000 years ago and called it the essence of spirituality.

When using normal everyday speech of course I'd say I'm conscious, but spirituality requires a far more careful use of language if we are not to misinform ourselves and others.

Consciousness is present at an infants birth, but the sense of self will take a few months before it begins to develop. The infant experiences only pure consciousness for the first few months of its life.

The sense of self then begins to develop in the consciousness already present at birth, but it is not conscious itself.

When the sense of self develops it floods consciousness to such an extent that most adults will never again experience pure consciousness.

This is not a trivial distinction. It's one of the reasons that in spirituality the sense of self is sometimes called an "illusion". See Self Illusion for more insight.

Spiritual enquiry is the art of experiencing pure consciousness by pausing the sense of self. So I have never been present during spiritual enquiry - the party starts when I leave! It's the human organism that practices spiritual enquiry when "I" am absent.

I first became interested in spirituality 1980. One of the first thing that I learnt was that I had something called a Self, or sense of self - the source of the "I". But then I learned that the sense of self was also an illusion! Using everyday language to talk about spirituality can easily lead to misunderstandings - it took me a few years before I realized that I'd been misinformed twice. 

Fortunately in 1983 I met U.G. Krishnamurti, an actual enlightened person who spoke about what had happened to him in very down-to-earth English. He didn't use fancy words, flowery phrases or Hindu terminology. He explained that the sense of self is a mental function that connects each moment together to create the experience of having a continuous independent identity - like a film projector plays a sequence of separate images that appear to be a continuous story.

This cleared up the two misunderstandings...

1)  The sense of self is not a metaphysical entity, but a real mental function - there are 8,200,000,000 senses of self on this planet right now. I don't have a sense of self because I am the sense of self! This sense of self, Tom, is typing this right now!

2)  It takes a few months after birth before it begins to develop. During this time the infant experiences "pure consciousness" in which there is no "me" or "you", no inner world and no outer world. If an adult were to experience pure consciousness it would be considered to be a significant spiritual experience. Patanjali wrote about this 2000years ago.  

When the sense of self begins to develop it creates this illusion of individual identity, of a "me" and a "you", but the sense of self is not an illusion - it's a real mental function. 

The spiritual enquiry exercise gives us the ability to pause the "I", to re-experience pure consciousness and to glimpse beyond the sense of self!

See Self Illusion for more info.

Spiritual enquiry, the subject of this Brief Guide, is the art of experiencing pure consciousness by pausing the Sense of Self.

The regular experience of pure consciousness caused an organic change in this human organism. I don't know how or what this change is, but I can definitely feel it. If I try to describe it the words "inner peace and happiness" are most appropriate.

Inner peace and happiness gradually developed in this human organism during each occasion when I was not present and pure consciousness was experienced.

It's the human organism that developed the inner peace and happiness, not me. This inner quality affects how I relate internally to myself, and how I relate externally to the world