Fear

Ever-Present

In quick summary, here are some of the unitary self’s leading qualities. It is:

Ever-present as the sense of self

Silent

Alert

Blissful

The origin of the mind

The source of love, intelligence, creativity, insight, and evolution

Self-regulating

Unbounded by time and space, therefore eternal

Untouched by physical change

Inconceivable and yet the origin of all concepts

Taken altogether, these traits are the enticement for seeking an answer to the ‘myself’ of the self, because at bottom, the self contains all of these traits if we can only get beyond our divided self, with all of its confusion and conflicts. Even in our divided state human beings possess every trait on the list — after all, the unitary self isn’t foreign to us, it is just “I am” when seen directly, without the cloud of beliefs, old conditioning, social training, and ego needs that occupy and dominate everyday life.

Reaching the unitary self — the term “non duality” has become a popular tag for the same thing — involves an inward journey. Any kind of clarification (e.g., higher education, psychotherapy, philosophy) can serve to penetrate some of the fog that mask the nondual state, but deeper investigations lead to meditation, contemplation, self-reflection, and keeping on the path until enlightenment or awakening is reached. This whole area can be termed personal evolution, and of course it’s not news that our times are rife with interest in this very thing.

We’ve explored the universal extent of self-awareness in our book You Are the Universe, but we’d like to underline one point that will seem exotic. If the unitary self is real and can actually be experienced, deep sleep should form no barrier. Every-present means ever-present. The sense of self should not vanish in sleep just because mental activity and perception of the world “out there” are gone. And so it is fascinating that people who have awakened, in fact continue to experience, quite consciously, a sense of self during deep dreamless sleep. They testify that this is the purest experience of the self, due to the very absence of mental activity.

It’s a fascinating note to end on. “I am” can be secularized, and in our view should be, if it is ever to become the cornerstone of human existence. In terms of higher consciousness, “I am” is the way, the truth, and the life.