We didn’t always have a Sense of Self: infants are born without it and for a few months experience the state pure consciousness.
When the sense of self is absent there is no “me”, or “you”, no inner or outer world. This is pure consciousness where only oneness exists.
This original state doesn’t last for too long. After a few months the Sense of Self begins to develop and starts to flood consciousness. The feeling of “me” and “you”, and the experience of an inner word and an outer world becomes our normal experience.
Pure consciousness becomes buried beneath the sense of identity and is no longer accessible. Most adults will never experience it again.
Fortunately it’s possible to re-experience pure consciousness by practising the spiritual enquiry exercise detailed in the following pages.
This significant spiritual state has been known about for millennia: Patanjali, the Indian sage, called it “stilling the mind” and wrote about it 2000 years ago (see Extras). He called it the essence of spirituality.
Experiencing pure consciousness, even for brief periods, has a cumulative effect on the human organism and creates an organic sense of inner peace and happiness that’s the subject of this brief guide.
Spiritual enquiry
Stumbling into it
Some extras
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