Everyone is seeking peace. Everyone wants peace. But reaching peace is a result of integrating several elements in our internal evolution. Peace is a result of several things falling into the right place in our evolution. There is a clear reason for the absence of peace and for the presence of peace. Obviously the foundation of peace is having access to our true nature, without which there cannot be peace but only the psychological illusion of being in peace. When the mind is numb and unconscious, it can subjectively translate its condition of relative lack of disturbances as peace. It’s obviously not peace; it’s nothing.

Peace is not a psychological state but a spiritual state. That’s why it requires awakening of our true self as its foundation, but that awakening will not produce complete peace unless me is surrendered and merged with our soul. The absence of this merging, this unity, this surrender, creates a split inside us. Two aspects of our existence cannot be unified, and therefore we are not at peace.

That which is real within our human consciousness, our me in its pure form, must be merged with the soul, and that which is not real, which we generally refer to as the false self, has to be renounced and dissolved. There are certain aspects of our human existence that simply cannot be merged with the soul. They are not pure; they are not conscious; they are not real. Only the real can be one with the soul, can actually coexist with the soul.

Peace is not for free; certain sacrifices need to be made to reach it. It’s a simple economy of consciousness. You cannot be lost and locked in subconscious or obsessive, negative tendencies and simultaneously experience the pure peace of your soul. It will not work.

The path of strict renunciation which is advocated by certain traditions that wish to get rid of the human existence altogether in order to transcend this dimension – transcendence is their only goal – is not so much concerned with integrating our human existence with the surrender to the soul or with transcendence. In a sense, their path is easier, but it is easier only for those souls which are really ready to let go of the human condition either because they have completed their human evolution – they are no longer excited by this human reality – or they are existentially finished, completely tired of this human reality and ready to surrender it.

But these souls are rare because the nature of the reality of this earth is that most souls which incarnate here still have an agenda on the human level; they still carry the weight of unfulfilled desires. They are emotionally deficient. They carry in their subtle bodies different obsessive desires, clingings. It’s not even rational. In fact, it is actually these obsessions with certain desires – with fulfillment of certain things that subconsciously they translate to be what will make them happy – that incarnates. Even if these souls are more conscious and have already been on the path for a number of lifetimes, they are far from being finished or completed on the human level.

So for these souls to pursue the path of strict renunciation would be completely unnatural and would simply lead to repression, and that which is repressed cannot transcend. All of those desires, that lack of fulfillment on the human level, all those emotional deficiencies, will come back through a back door. They will hog the self, preventing it from merging with the beyond.

Some souls see the spiritual path as a way to escape from their condition – because of having so many insecurities and fears, and not wanting to confront them, constantly being unable to fulfill certain essential human desires, and so forth. The spiritual path seems like a solution to avoid that dilemma, to get out from this human realm. But it does not work because human completion, reaching a certain essential maturity within our human existence, is part of our blueprint and it has to be honored. It has to be embraced as a part of our transcendence.

So here we are entering the most challenging type of evolution where surrender to our soul, moving into the realm of transcendence, has to be integrated with the process of becoming fulfilled, with the process of maturation on the human level. It is a tricky path, like a razor’s edge – very precise, very exact. And there has to be wisdom, honesty, and integrity to bridge these two. Otherwise, it’s easy to fall off the path, to get sucked into the human dimension or to repress one’s humanness. Many of our human thoughts, desires, and longings are real. They are positive; they are necessary for the human to evolve and complete itself. When the human is complete, he is simply relaxed; he is at ease with his human existence, and only then can he truly surrender. He is no longer the obscuring factor. He enriches the soul through his surrender.

However, the fact is that the majority of human desires, pseudo longings, insecurities, and fears are purely subconscious. They are not from the soul. They are not from the pure me. They are just from the mind. Honoring and embracing the natural human inside you and renouncing the false one, the subconscious one, the neurotic one, is what must be done in order to create the proper relationship between the human and the soul. And that proper relationship always must be based on deep embodiment of the light of I am.

If your thoughts and emotions weaken your relationship with your fundamental nature, weaken your inner state, weaken the depth of abidance, it means that you went too far into your human. You lost the balance. Some of our students sit in meditation and think about or go into different fears or insecurities, or being bored. They produce all kinds of thoughts. Some think about food or sex. Think about food or think about sex as much as you want – let your imagination go wild – but while simultaneously totally surrendering into the light of I am. That surrender will bring balance into all these thoughts; they will have less weight; they will be less important.

Any thoughts or emotions that weaken your connection with your soul must be dropped. A certain playful movement of intelligence is part of the creativity of our consciousness, but this true creativity can happen only from the depth of I am. That part of the mind which is overly obsessed and neurotic, which is clinging to negative emotions, which is constantly processing information such as survival issues, has to be renounced.

Part of the process of surrender is learning the ability to abide in the state of non-protectiveness. Some call it trust, but trust is still a psychological justification. In the state of surrender, there is no trust – nobody cares. That self which is surrendering is not justifying letting go of the mind through the concept of trust. The more correct term is ‘fearlessness’. Trust and courage are still psychological. Fearlessness is a condition of the soul.

There is as if a law that any soul which surrenders, through the wisdom of life, will be fulfilled on the human level as well. And those who do not surrender will never be fulfilled because the human can never be fulfilled; it’s always empty. He can be fulfilled only when the essence of his existence is surrendered to his higher self. After that, all the other elements in his human existence gradually, magically, fall into the right place. It is not renunciation; it is embracing our humanness from the depth of surrender to the light of the soul. That is the only way to become whole.

We often speak about our teaching as the teaching of wholeness. What does it mean to become whole? What does it mean to become complete? And how does that stand in the context of our relative interpretation of our level of achievement?  Someone can be in a relatively low state of evolution and if they feel themself to be complete, assume that they are whole. What is the connection between our relative interpretation of our attainment or our level of evolution and the objective truth? And is there such a thing as the objective truth? If one thinks that one is happy, does it mean that one really is happy? Or is one perhaps just deceiving oneself or not sensitive enough to recognize the reality of one’s situation – that perhaps one is actually deeply suffering? People of lower evolution, lower consciousness, have lower requirements in order to feel or translate how they feel as being well, but it does not mean that they are really well.

One of the important aspects of spiritual evolution is aligning our personal perception, our subjective interpretation, with the objective truth – how our soul, our higher being, perceives reality. At first our interpretations come from our lower self, our lower intelligence, our relative me, with all of its conditioning. That me, in fact, cannot differentiate between what it thinks, how it sees reality, and how it has been conditioned by its environment, culture, and other people. There’s no individuality there. That me, in its essence, is collective. And this is what the me of most people is; it’s collective. There’s nothing original there. They are just repeating information contained in the collective mind. One becomes a Christian, a Jew, or a Buddhist because one is born in a certain country. Most people do not question this conditioning; they do not strive to see their life from a higher perspective. They are like robots.

While it is natural that initially our perception, our belief system, is based on our me with its relative sense of self and knowledge about things. However, as we evolve into our soul, we are gradually surrendering to a deeper perceiver, to our higher intelligence, higher consciousness, which is linked to that part of us which is rooted in universal reality. And it is the universal reality which represents true objectivity.

Sometimes you may even ask yourself how does your soul perceive your life, your path, your purpose, the meaning of your existence? The me thinks and has different ideas about different matters, but how does your soul see your life? You perhaps have a certain picture of how your life should look, but how does your soul see it? Is she in accord, in agreement, with how your me perceives it, or perhaps her perception is entirely different? Of course to see through the eyes of your soul, you need to surrender. You need to choose to fall into yourself in a deeper way, beyond your me, into a deeper intelligence beyond your mind.

Regarding the nature of the spiritual path, there are different views as to what is the true purpose of our internal evolution. Some of these views reflect, at least on some level, the truth and some of them twist the nature of reality. It depends on the teaching. The higher evolved teachings are closer to the truth. The lower teachings are further from the truth or even in conflict with the truth.

For instance, in Hinduism or Buddhism – which both have the same roots – the perception of the spiritual path is seen as reaching liberation, moksha, nirvana. This world is seen, more or less, as something negative or an obstacle. And so our human nature is seen as an obstacle to arriving at the state of liberation and transcendence. The vision of the Sufi path is entirely different; it’s about reaching ecstatic union with the divine, with the beloved. The vision of Taoism is again entirely different. It’s about realizing the nature of the Tao – the principle that rules existence.

Taoism is perhaps the most grounded spiritual path. This does not mean that it is complete, but it is certainly grounded. It is grounded to such an extent that, at times, it can even be seen as materialistic. It’s no wonder that in the times of the decline of Taoism, many streams of Taoism developed that were mostly interested in longevity, immortality of the body, or accumulating an enormous amount of chi, energy. Of course, that has nothing to do with the original Taoism.

The vision of wholeness points to actualization of our complete spiritual potential – not just to reach this or that, or even to become liberated from this reality or from suffering, but to become truly actualized on all levels, to actualize our multi-dimensional self. The correct vision of the path, of its multi-dimensional nature, is essential in order to move in the correct direction. Initially, one simply cannot know where the spiritual path is taking one. It’s simply hidden, unknown, intangible, mysterious. That’s why spiritual seekers can be so easily manipulated by different teachings or gurus who use the situation that they know something that their followers don’t.

The ability to identify the correct vision of the path is itself an expression of our maturity. Even someone who is at the beginning of the path, whose experience of his true self is limited, has the ability to differentiate between what feels right and correct and what doesn’t. This means that from the very beginning of the path, we have a responsibility to think for ourselves, to be critical, discriminative, and sensitive – to use our inner intelligence and intuition to identify what is right. Many people are ignorant of the fact that their initial vision – what they think about their path and where it should take them – determines their future. The vision of the path is already putting the future in motion, and if that vision is incorrect, the future will be incorrect. Of course, that vision can be modified, but for many seekers certain fundamental concepts that dwell at the foundation of their vision of the path are difficult to question.

Our ability to become whole – to actualize the state of wholeness – is directly connected to our potential and our ability to identify when we are incomplete, when we are still suffering. If one is not able to identify when one is suffering, when one is incomplete, one will not find the motivation to move forward. One will get stagnated in a false satisfaction. That potential is related to our past evolution, to how we have developed through many lifetimes, but it is not something static. It’s something we can activate and develop further through our passion, our inquisitiveness, and our intention to understand more and to evolve deeper.

The vision of wholeness points in two directions: the inner and the outer. It points to our evolution as a soul and to our completion as a human, and these two are entirely interconnected. If the human is not evolved, if the human is to a large extent incomplete, his own incompleteness will affect the realization of the soul. On the other hand, if the soul is realized and has become the true foundation of our existence, based on that foundation, the human can much more quickly arrive at the state of completion.

For the soul to become complete, she must awaken on all levels. The three main dimensions of her awakening are consciousness, realization of her divinity, which is the heart, and reaching unity with the source, which is her beingness. Once all of these dimensions are awakened, they must be integrated into one self, one complete inner being. It is all directly connected to arriving at deeper states of samadhi, absorption.

Realization of the soul must encompass a certain essential transformation of the human. For instance, if the mind is not transformed, if the mind is not integrated and merged with the soul, the soul herself cannot be complete. The human dimension of the soul has to be unified with her internal dimension, with her universal dimension. Within the human reality, our human consciousness, our identity as our human self, has to evolve in a parallel way in order to match the evolution of the soul. This means one has to mature psychologically and one has to fulfill the essential desires of the human – those desires which are positive, that facilitate arriving at the state of human maturity and peace.

Psychological evolution encompasses evolution of our intelligence and evolution of our emotions, and it is all connected to the process of purification and healing. Human completion does not mean perfection. The human is not meant to be perfect; the human is meant to be good enough. After all, the human is just a relative expression of the soul in this plane of imperfection. That which expresses itself in the dimension of imperfection can never become perfect. And yet the human has the capacity to arrive at a state of completion and deep existential peace. This is what we call the human at rest. The human actually relaxes; it relaxes so deeply that it naturally falls into the soul. It is no longer acting, performing its human existence outside of the soul, and it naturally gets reabsorbed into its higher self.

When the human is absorbed in the soul, it should not be confused with renunciation as a solution to our human existence. In fact, only when the human is absorbed in the soul can she become a true human and experience her human dimension in a positive and harmonious way. A human who lives from the soul can realize the natural joy and creativity of human existence. A human who is absorbed in the soul does not think, ‘I hope this is my last incarnation.’ He is thinking, ‘What a wonderful day. What an amazing adventure it is to live as a human in this magical world.’

Becoming whole is not the end of the spiritual journey, but it is an important station in our evolution where we cross over the dimension of incompleteness and fragmentation and enter the perfection of reality. We begin to evolve within perfection, not away from imperfection, not away from suffering, but towards higher bliss, love, and understanding.

Our soul is a reflection of universal reality in individuality. The three centers of the soul correspond to the three fundamental aspects of the ultimate reality. In fact, that whole process of awakening our soul is about becoming a perfect reflection of the source of our creation. The soul is complete when she becomes a pure reflection of the beyond, of the light of creation – a pure reflection of god.

In many traditions of non-duality, self-realization is described as a process of identification with the ultimate, with the absolute existence. However, through self-realization, we are not identifying with god; we are becoming our own self. It is easy to confuse the realization of being that perfect reflection with being the source of that reflection, which is god. But our purpose is not to become god. That would be foolish and arrogant. Our purpose is to become our own self. Becoming our own self requires arriving at the state of unity with our creator. To be one with the creator is not the same as to become the creator. When we enter an ocean, we do not become the ocean.

In order to become that perfect reflection, we have to become our complete soul. If we awaken only one dimension of the soul, we are reflecting only one aspect of reality, and even that one aspect remains incomplete because all the dimensions of the soul are fully interconnected. Consciousness in disconnection from being is incomplete, and being without consciousness is incomplete.

Our consciousness reflects the nature of universal consciousness; it is made from the same substance, from the same light. And yet, in a miraculous way, it is experienced in the context of our individuality. You’re not merely experiencing consciousness; you’re experiencing your consciousness. But your true consciousness is pure like universal consciousness. When you awaken your heart, you’re awakening the divine inside yourself – the reflection in you of the divine that is beyond you. Through awakening your being and arriving at the condition of immaculate, absolute rest, you are reflecting in yourself the ultimate restfulness, the motionlessness, the absence of the unmanifested, which is the container of the ultimate reality.

Through unification of the three dimensions of the soul – consciousness, heart, and being – as they merge into one, you can experience within yourself the state of totality. Consciousness, the divine, and the absolute are not separated in god – it is all one self, one reality. But because we are reaching reality from the relative standpoint of our individuality, at first we realize these dimensions separately. We are entering through different portals, and only when all of them are open can those three dimensions be unified as one soul.

Universal intelligence – the wisdom, the mind of god – is another aspect of reality. It is also being realized within our soul as both pure intelligence and transparent intelligence, which are different aspects, different dimensions, of intelligence.

In her nature, our soul is divine. She is a manifestation of the light of creation, and yet because of the design of this dimension and the various laws governing it, our soul has to go through a long process of self-actualization. Our soul has to actually come into existence. That is the miracle of awakening – that something that was not there gives birth to itself and begins to exist. Yet there is a sense that it was always there. Why? Because it is made from the same substance as our creator, who was always there, timelessly. So our soul on some level was not there ever before, and on another level it always has been. These are two different ways of looking at the same awakened self, which are both valid and true.

The nature of spirituality, the nature of reality, is paradoxical. It’s like quantum physics. Something can be and not be at the same time. But from the standpoint of reality, there’s no paradox. Everything simply is the way it is. We describe that paradox of awakening, of realizing our original nature, as meeting our future or as our future meeting us. That is the mystery of time: how things unfold from the now that have been and never have been.

Our completion, becoming whole, arriving at our complete self, represents a certain point in our destiny, a certain point in time that we need to reach before a new horizon can open up, the new future beyond our present destiny. To be our complete self, the three dimensions of the soul, the three centers of I am, and the three centers of pure me need to be actualized, fully open, and then we become our higher self.

No matter how long it takes, the soul has to awaken or else there will never be peace. Our me, which is the first and foremost manifestation of the light of I am, is the one who is serving the noble goal of soul actualization. That’s why this me is so important. Without that me, nothing is. Initially, our me evolves within the dimension of me; it is developing its own intelligence and understanding, and it is making choices. The more evolved it is, the more it has access to free will. It can choose whether to succumb to its lower nature or to serve its higher nature. When it is serving its higher nature, it is not serving anything other than its own higher self.

After all, our me, at the beginning, is simply the soul disconnected from I am, the soul that has forgotten itself in the dimension of me. And gradually it begins to remember, tracing its way back to its original home and to its original self. The journey back home is the path. The path is challenging and difficult, but it cannot fail because walking it is the very reason for our creation. It is the will of the divine.

What really is the essence of ‘awakening’,a term that is used quite freely?

Having access to the state beyond the mind or even embodying that state, we would not yet call ‘awakening’, but rather ‘an opening’. Awakening requires recognition of our essential nature; it is the meeting with our inner self. If this meeting has not happened, one is still not awakened.

Of course, without opening to our inner state, without connection to I am, there cannot be awakening. However, opening to the state beyond the mind does not automatically produce awakening. That’s why the essence of awakening cannot be a function of grace – it is our responsibility to recognize who we are. The function of grace is to create an opening in which awakening becomes possible. But no one else can do it for you, not even god.

This is a problem for some of our students. Even though they make substantial progress in their practice, this element of meeting their true self in still not in the right place. It’s like you feel something, but you do not know what it is and you have not yet met it properly. There’s still something like a veil separating you from yourself. It’s like when you look through a glass at the world, you see the world but there’s something in between, a layer that separates you from what is out there. In this case,you are separated from what is ‘out’ inside, because from the viewpoint of me, the inner state is objective, meaning it is outside of it. This is the internal objectivity. As long as the inner state is experienced as objective, as external to me, it is not yet awakened, which means that it is not yet filled with the consciousness and identity of the soul.

This element of meeting with our true self has not been elaborated properly by any teachings because they do not comprehend the meaning of the duality between me and I am, and they do not point to the event of the awakening of the soul. So because of the limitation of the technology of their path, they cannot bring clarity to this matter. For them, reaching the state beyond the mind or opening to the beyond is the same as awakening.

Even though in some traditions they speak about evolution into deeper states of samadhi, which is absorption in that opening, in that universal energy, that samadhi does not imply that awakening has happened. Samadhi can mean that me is merged with I am but still has not met itself as the higher self. It is like a passive absorption, which is on some level unconscious, of the personal in the universal.

But there is more to our evolution, to the purpose of our creation and existence, than just to become absorbed, or worse, just to disappear. We have been created for a purpose. That purpose is to actualize our higher identity within the context of universal existence – to become a true child of god. When it is said that we have been created in the likeness of god, the true meaning of this concept is that it is our destiny to reflect the identity of the supreme reality in our individuality. It is to become like Shiva. A person who is unconscious is not in any way like god or the likeness of god – just the opposite.

To reflect the light of the creator in our existence is the function of our evolution and awakening. The question of great importance is: How can you meet yourself? What sort of faculties do you need to activate to actually meet yourself and not just sit in your consciousness in a passive, insensitive way not knowing who you are? There is a certain magic in meeting oneself. There is no technique; there’s no practice for it. Practice is about reaching energetic unification with your state–embodying it. But there’s no trick for the actual meeting with yourself to happen. It has to happen from within your existence. That is why it is called ‘awakening’; it’s something almost unexplainable, something non-linear, something magical.

Seekers are usually trained to seek enlightenment. They are rarely trained, taught, or educated to seek themselves. Even on the path of self-enquiry, they are not really seeking themselves; they are trying to use self-enquiry to identify with the universal self. And they cannot succeed because the one who is enquiring is not the universal self– it is the person.

Our weak, poor, undignified relationship with our own existence is one of the main problems in the so-called spirituality in this plane. Either seekers are looking for something external or in themselves, thinking that magical enlightenment will take them to some fairyland, or they are not doing anything, thinking they are already okay just by being and accepting themselves. But what they are accepting is their ignorance, which is exactly what they are not supposed to accept.

The paradox of the process of meeting our true self is that initially it is simply absent. There’s nothing to meet, so the observer has nothing to meet. At the most, it can get in touch with its fragmented sense of me or reach some illusory comfort through disidentifying from thoughts. The path of awakening begins with gaining access to the light of I am, but that access alone will not produce awakening. That access is an opportunity for awakening to take place, but that awakening is a function of our cooperation, our recognition, and our remembrance.

How you translate who you are is conditioned by your memories, memories that go into your infinite past. You have always been this me, so naturally you interpret yourself as me. And even if you experience I am, you are still me which is experiencing I am. In order to go beyond this conditioned memory, you need to activate the unconditional memory, the remembrance of your original state, your original nature – ancient memory.

When a child is born, it totally identifies with the construct of reality imposed on it by its parents and environment – a certain belief system, a certain conditioning of perception. Children who are more evolved – meaning they were more evolved prior to their birth – have the sensitivity, the sense that they have forgotten something, that something has been taken away from them. They cannot pinpoint what it is because their intelligence is unable to grasp it, but they feel as if they have been deceived.

The Greek philosopher Plato wrote that to be born is to forget, but most souls which are born do not remember that they have forgotten. So to remember that you have forgotten is actually the first step towards remembering what it is that you need to remember, and to remember not just that you have forgotten but what you have forgotten. It is this deep intuition which links us to our original state, to our original self, the presence of which is an indication of spiritual maturity. Those who do not have this intuition, those who do not remember that they have forgotten, are not in touch with their origin; they got totally identified with their human self.

Therefore, it is your responsibility –even if you do not remember that you have forgotten –to make yourself remember, and then you can remember what you have forgotten. Meeting your true self, which is the actual awakening, is not just to recognize what is there; it is to remember who you are.

Why did we enter the plane of forgetfulness at all? Why did we forget who we are in the first place? Many theories and explanations have been made to answer these questions. Some see creation as the play of god or presuppose that the pure nature of consciousness has never been lost. But if the question is not properly posed, trying to answer it will not produce any true understanding. Quite often it is the question that is more important than the answer because when the question is asked correctly, the answer is already there.

We have never forgotten ourselves because we never existed. To be able to forget yourself, first you need to exist and know yourself. In this dimension of creation, we do not start from knowing ourselves, then forget, and then again strive to get to know ourselves.

We begin from non-existence. From non-existence we enter very low levels of consciousness, subconsciousness, and gradually climb the ladder of evolution. For the sense of me to develop, millions and millions of years are required. Many elements need to fall into the right place. And then there is a long way for that me to become conscious of itself and for its intelligence to develop so it can begin to question itself and the source of its existence.

Human beings have developed to such an extent that they are actually looking for the cause of their existence. One of the naive rationalizations of that search for the cause is the concept of god. The concept of god does not really mean anything. It is too abstract to signify anything tangible; it’s just an idea. It is as if to say that there is a cause which we do not know, and that cause maintains all existence, but other than that we simply do not know what it is.

When people speak of god, they abide on the illusion that they know what they are talking about, not being at all in touch with their absolute ignorance. Beliefs and philosophies are all substitutes, compensations, ways to hide our ignorance and emptiness. Human beings do not have the courage to live in not-knowing; they need to build those conceptual castles of sand to secure their structure of ego so that ego can live another day.

When we speak about remembering who we truly are, it should not be translated as remembering what you knew in your past but have forgotten – like someone remembering their past life. You are remembering what you never knew. What you are remembering is not your past but your future. You are remembering your destiny – what you’re meant to become. That’s why self-inquiry cannot produce this remembrance.Self-inquiry is confined to who we are in our present while remembrance is linked to what we are becoming.

That’s why we call it awakening – it is the actualization of our potential, to become that into which we are growing. We are meeting our future as much as our future is meeting us, and meeting the future is evolution. The more efficient, intelligent, and correct is our evolution, the faster we meet our future. If our evolution is incorrect, we actually can miss our future, can sidetrack on the path, moving into a dimension which is neither the past nor the future:a nether land, a dimension of suspension.

Ideally, the spiritual path is the technology to manifest our future in the most quick and efficient way within the limitations inherent to this dimension, where evolution is inherently slow due to the heavy nature of unconsciousness that resides here and due to the simple fact that creatures whom live in this plane are not evolved.

In Buddhism, there is a wise expression that ignorance has no beginning but has an end. It has no beginning because no one has become ignorant initially; there was no one there. On some level, we may even consider the initial ignorance as the first impulse, the first movement in creation, meaning it is not necessarily something negative. It is simply the design of this dimension of creation. Through remembrance of our pure nature, we are realizing two things: our higher future self, our divine individuality, and the nature of existence as it is and as it was prior to our creation.

The purpose of our creation in time is not just to realize the nature of reality – it is to give something back to that reality. Each one of you has been created to become a unique angle of perception of the universal reality. Each one of you is the eyes of god looking at himself. Your soul is the essence of creation because it is the place where creation meets its creator –you are that. That is the correct interpretation of the sentence ‘I am that’.

If one is fragmented in consciousness, it has a detrimental effect on the other states of awakening, so the fact that consciousness is the first step on our path does not make it any less important or profound. Other states of awakening are relatively simple. The awakening, transformation, and, at last, the surrender of consciousness are the most challenging. Consciousness is simply complex, and unless this complexity is properly grasped and understood, there will always be confusion, or one will simply remain fragmented. There are those who are confused, and there are those who are fragmented but not confused because they are not even in touch with their confusion. To be confused is actually a much better starting point because at least from there one can activate the intention to bring true clarity. One can awaken to the I am of consciousness and abide upon the foolish conviction that there’s no more me, that one is enlightened, or one can use this opportunity of having access to the light of I am to begin the process of growing into complete consciousness, which is the true purpose of that initial opening. If that purpose is not fulfilled, that initial opening and the opportunity it provides to transform is simply wasted. Even though reaching the absolute state is a major shift, its essence is extremely uncomplicated; one has to shift, embody, and stabilize the state, and then live from the absolute. With consciousness, it is not that simple. Even though everyone speaks of consciousness, no one really understands the nature of consciousness; it is still a secret. All these concepts about consciousness are simply hiding ignorance. Sometimes it’s better not to understand anything at all than to abide upon a superficial understanding or a pretension of understanding; if one simply does not understand, at least all the doors are still open and one still maintains the quality of innocence. Our consciousness is complex, but the moment you get in touch with its major aspects, which are in fact aspects of your own self, you find that it’s not something abstract that requires you to have a very analytical mind to be able to grasp the subtle nuances of it. All the aspects of consciousness that we speak of can be clearly experienced as inherent to who you are. They are just different angles of looking at the reality of your identity. The moment all these elements of consciousness are clearly recognized, met, and touched, you can clearly see that even though your consciousness is rich and multi-dimensional, it is as well quite simple. A human of average intelligence should be able to grasp its nature. However, if we are fragmented, locked in the mind, and completely identified with the function of the observer, obviously there’s no way to understand what consciousness really is. For that understanding to begin, we need to first awaken the foundation of consciousness, which is pure consciousness – the ground of complete consciousness. Understanding alone is not enough if it’s not immediately connected to the transformation and awakening of these aspects of consciousness with which we are getting in touch. Awakening to pure consciousness is the beginning of the awakening process of consciousness as a whole. In this process, it’s not like you are practicing something. You are practicing but not in a way that you are performing some techniques; you are growing into yourself, integrating and connecting all the aspects of your identity.

Within consciousness, pure me and conscious me need to coexist, and they are emphasized differently in different stages of our practice. The difficulty with grasping pure me is that it may be felt as not-me, as something other than me, because we are naturally more drawn to identify with our previous sense of me. The previous sense of me can be experienced either on the level of the observer or, when it is more developed, on the level of the conscious me. Even if conscious me is not awakened, every person of a sane mind has at least some sense of it because it is interconnected with the observer.

Coming back to pure me: How to embody pure me? How to identify with this deeper dimension of me which initially seems quite unfamiliar, new, and different? Pure me is being activated on several levels. The first level is energetic; it is an energetic state linked directly to I am. If that energetic state is not established, pure attention cannot embody pure me, and it cannot merge with I am without going through pure me. So that energetic state has to be activated, and it is activated through a combination of self-remembrance from pure attention and the energetic surrender of pure attention into I am.

A deeper level of awakening or activation of pure me is on the level of consciousness: shifting our identity into that new state, becoming it, meeting it as our original self, recognizing that this is who we are in our pure nature. This meeting with pure me and the recognition of it as our pure self is not a result of understanding created by the mind – it is much deeper. It is a profoundly intimate realization. That meeting, that deeper awakening, is done through pure intelligence and pure attention, which are the inward emanation of conscious me into I am.

To grow into pure me is to first of all establish the correct energetic state within which pure me can be maintained. Then one cultivates the continuous surrender from pure attention and realizes its essence of pure knowing. That pure knowing is a reflection of universal intimacy and love in the essence of our individual existence. One of the reasons why itis difficult to grasp pure me and to meet it as our inner self is the fact that we are entering pure me through surrender. Pure me is not a state of presence – it is a meeting of presence with absence – because through embodying pure me, we are simultaneously disappearing in it. It is because of this disappearingthat we cannot define our sense of self. We don’t know who we are and who we are becoming, and yet we are becoming something new. This ‘something’ is rooted in absence and knows itself in a pure way as the consciousness of the soul.

Those who speak about meditation usually assume that it is just about discipline, practice, reaching certain attainments, or arriving at states of absorption. But without love and intimacy, and without the ability to meet our inner self, meditation is empty and dry – there is no soul and there is no god.

Even though awakening to pure me is sudden in its essence, there is a long and gradual process of growing into that new consciousness, a long process of maturation into our higher self. In this process, all the layers of me and our past identity need to be realigned. While you abide in pure me, you can observe that there is an inherent and continuous recognition. That recognition is pure and yet it does contain an element of subtle duality, a certain internal dynamic within pure me. This dynamic, this most subtle duality, is a function of pure attention which cannot be separated from pure intelligence. The function of pure attention is not only to awaken and embody pure me; it is to bridge conscious me with I am.Pure attention is the link. Without that link, all the layers of our identity that are connected to human consciousness would forever remain separated from the soul.

Consciousness is not something static. It is not a state that does not move or change. There is a static dimension to consciousness; there is the motionlessness of its basic nature, in particular when it is rooted in the source. But within consciousness, there is life. It is alive, like a being. It lives and has a purpose. It is in relationship with itself, in relationship with the source, and in relationship with the world. It is to this being that we speak, and it is this being which listens, which is learning, growing into itself, making mistakes and correcting them.

Pure me and conscious me coexist within the overall state of consciousness. While at the beginning pure me needs to be emphasized, conscious me has to in addition keep developing and growing into itself, based on its connection with pure me, so that it can be integrated into our fundamental consciousness and serve as the proper bridge between the consciousness of the soul and our human intelligence. What the conscious me is is rather simple but at the same time quite difficult to grasp. It is difficult to grasp because, firstly, it is so inherent to us, so close to who we are, being the essence of human consciousness and, secondly, when it is not fully developed, its sense of self is not solidified and it is mixing too much with the observer and the mental reality.

Quite often new students experience an over-crystallization of energy in the front of the head. The sense of self that is experienced in that area is your conscious me, but it is lost in the observer and that observer is excessively intensified. This is also common for those who tend to be overly mental, using their mind too much, and also with those who experience mental anxiety. In trying to control this anxiety, the observer is gradually becoming unnaturally intense. In order to transform that intensity, that over-crystallization, we need first of all to expand our consciousness into I am and then to become more conscious and more relaxed on the level of the conscious me.

When you surrender to your consciousness, you are indirectly opening the energetic knots in the front of the head. When you are learning how to abide properly in the front, how to properly embody your conscious me, you are more directly working with this problem. Indirect and direct work with the transformation of the mental self needs to be interconnected. Without a certain level of surrender, conscious me cannot reach its natural condition, but surrender alone may not be enough to transform the mental self because the very root of the mental self has to be transformed through the birth of the conscious me.

In the more direct work with conscious me, you gently move your attention to the front of your head,bringing a certain focus. At the same time you are relaxed and loving in your relationship with conscious me, meaning conscious me is in a loving relationship with itself.

Conscious me is the dimension of me where, as the term describes, me is conscious of itself directly. In pure me, me is conscious of itself but through surrender. In conscious me, even without surrender, me can be fully conscious of itself; surrender just helps that consciousness to become fully natural because when there is too much presence, something always goes wrong. We must be connected to a dimension beyond me for our me to be truly natural. Who is paying attention to conscious me? It is the same attention which is paying attention to or surrendering itself into pure me and I am: pure attention. In conscious me, pure attention is coming back home to its source. Conscious me is the very source of pure attention.

When conscious me links itself with the mind, the observer is activated. The observer is directly connected with intelligence, with the mind. When the observer is rooted in conscious me and conscious me is rooted in the soul, we call it the ‘transparent observer’ and transparent intelligence is its environment. When conscious me expands towards the soul, it is not the observer but pure attention and pure intelligence that are activated. However, it all flows from the conscious me – if we are indeed conscious, that is. A person who is unconscious has an observer and has the mind, but they have no foundation. The observer is not connected to conscious me; the conscious me is either absent or there is just a trace of it which is occasionally experienced.

How to be in the front of the head is an important question. It is part of your head and since you live in your head all your life, it is essential that you know how to exist in that space. People are learning to exist in the world in order to survive and be happy psychologically. But no one is really trying to discover how to exist in their own head, which is, after all, the center of your universe.

So, how to be in the front of the head? First of all, you need to feel who is there, who is directly present before any thought arises, and then you need to intentionally become one with that presence. You may recognize that sometimes in the front of your head there are energies which are not comfortable – restless energies or a high frequency of subconscious mental energies. These can disturb the process of embodying your conscious me.

There are two ways to deal with these energies. One is to gather yourself more strongly on the level of conscious me, and that alone will discipline or draw all these fluctuating subconscious energies into conscious me. The existence of these energies points mostly to the fragmented state of the conscious me; it is not the master of that area and some aspect of its consciousness are dissipated, allowing these energies to fluctuate and move around. When conscious me is empowered, it is alone in the front of the head. There is no opposition or disturbing influence.

The second approach to pacifying these disturbing energies, the restlessness of the mental self, is to bring the element of being into the conscious me. You gather yourself, embodying conscious me, and then you try to rest in the front in a similar way to how pure me rests vertically. Gradually you will experience a certain kind of absorption in the front of the head; conscious me is absorbed, resting.

For this process to be efficient and successful, we need to be simultaneously rooted in pure me. Conscious me alone is quite limited. It can reach freedom from the mind, but freedom from the mind is not yet real freedom. Real freedom is absorption in our soul, meaning a level of absence has to be added to balance the presence of conscious me.

Reaching the correct relationship with conscious me, to actually know how to be in the front of your head, is an essential element of your evolution into your true self. If conscious me is not properly realized and integrated, you can never become complete on the level of consciousness; you will remain fragmented and split.

The evolution of the conscious me continues even after reaching complete consciousness. That continuation is based on our expansion and surrender into the vertical dimension. At some point, conscious me moves into the absolute state, becoming one with the source. The unity of pure me, conscious me, and the unmanifested is the state of samadhi.

Being is the true foundation of meditation. Consciousness is the foundation of our identity, but being is the foundation of our existence, which is our connection to the source. Being is like the inner earth. It is invisible. It cannot be found in this universe because it contains this universe.

From our angle of perception, from our individuality, there are two dimensions of being. One is the connective space between our individuality, our sense of self, and the source. The second is the source itself, the unmanifested. What this means is that we experience being both within creation, in this manifested reality, and when the absolute state is reached, we experience being on the other side. So being has two sides – this side and the other side. It is similar to consciousness – it has this side and the other side. It is experienced on the side of presence and on the side of absence.

When the term ‘being’ is used, it is usually applied in a very general sense and actually does not mean much or means nothing; it’s just a word referring to some kind of a mild connection to the now or to a relative condition of relaxation. Someone can be in consciousness and call it ‘being’ because people are mixing everything. So in our work, it must be clear that being is a very specific dimension. Everything, our whole existence, is linked to being, especially when being is awakened – even consciousness and our heart are touched and penetrated by the energy of being.

But being itself is a very specific reality. The doorway to being is tan t’ien, or hara, the center of the vital force in our lower belly. It is not a chakra; it an energy center. Tan t’ien goes in two directions – one is towards creation and the second is towards the uncreated. This is where the original energy actually enters creation. It allows us to exist. It is from where the vital force flows into our body. Without vital force, we would die – there would be no consciousness, no heart, no intelligence; nothing could exist in the context of individuality.

In Zen or Taoism when they practice with hara in order to strengthen it, often it is not linked to the energy of surrender. It is empowering the vital force, the energy of chi. While this is obviously very beneficial, the true work with hara is to open the other dimension of the center so it can serve as a portal for entering the absolute. When hara is too much solidified energetically, too much strengthened with respect to the vital force, on some level it can even block surrender. It’s like too much presence in consciousness prevents surrender – too much presence in hara blocks the door to the absence.

The true strengthening of that center is not just about empowering the vital force but about embodying the pure me of being. Pure me of being is naturally linked to the energy of surrender because without that surrender, it cannot come into existence. When meditators sit doing their limited practices, by the fact that they sit, energy often naturally drops into being because this is where it wants to go when we are not doing much. When we are doing things and we are active, our energy circulates in different directions, being constantly distracted. But when we sit, no matter what practice one is doing, eventually one gets tired of this practice and comes closer to the condition of not doing anything, and this is when the energy drops. Why does it drop? Because it becomes available to the gravity of the source. Even though we are not conscious of the source, not knowing of its existence, the source knows about our existence. It feels each soul from the depth of its bottomless presence, which from our standpoint is absence.

But it is not enough that energy drops. Even when it drops, it cannot go very deep because we have not embodied our being. It is just an energy experience, and an energy experience without consciousness of our true subjectivity is quite meaningless and can never become permanent. Those who fall into a deep state of being occasionally do not even know how they got there and they crave to repeat this experience. Sometimes they cannot so they abide upon the memory of it, cherishing these moments of being.

The idea is that we master the state of being; that we are not dependent on some relative openings, moments of grace, but that we create an intelligent, conscious relationship with that dimension and master the art of surrender and absorption. When there is a correct understanding, when we get deeper knowledge of the dimension of being, we realize it’s quite easy to move deeper into that reality. While reaching the absolute state is a function of grace – meaning something has to open for us to cross over into the unmanifested – to experience deep being, which is quite close to the absolute, is relatively easy. Those who are quite ungrounded, who have a tendency to have too much energy in the mind or in the upper centers, usually need a longer time to bring energy down, to redirect their energy flow towards the source.

Evolution into being is a beautiful process. It is one of the most rewarding aspects of the inner path because it is entirely based on surrender. It is like true relaxation into existence. But for that relaxation to be true and correct, we must embody the subject to that relaxation, which is pure me of being. When people relax, they relax in their personality, in their body. They do not relax in their innermost existence because their innermost existence is absent; there’s nobody there. As we are surrendering, we are simultaneously awakening someone, somebody who is there, the true subject to the realization of absorption, the one who merges with reality. In being, it is the pure me of being.

When you work exclusively with being, you must remember that it is not your consciousness which is surrendering. Consciousness is just aligning itself. It is only pure me of being that is diving in the direction of the source. If you are trying to surrender from consciousness, by the fact that you are surrendering from the wrong center, you are weakening your connection to pure me of being, and obviously you have no strength to penetrate the depth of the now. When we are surrendering in order to reach a deeper state of absence, initially we always emphasize only one center because pure attention has to fully identify with that center to create the proper momentum of surrender. Only when all the centers are open do we begin to integrate them into one self, and then we surrender from all the centers simultaneously. But until then, we choose one center to embody fully and to strengthen the power of surrender.

So when you surrender from pure me of being, obviously you need to be in touch with your consciousness and make sure that your consciousness is not getting weakened, that you don’t fall into a condition of unclarity or drift into the mind. Consciousness has to be clear, in its pristine condition, but the weight of your surrender and the weight of where your pure attention is directed is on pure me of being.

The success of the path, the secret, is based on awakening to each dimension of our existence separately because by choosing one dimension, we can fully focus on it. If instead we want to awaken and experience everything together from the beginning, we end up experiencing nothing, not reaching any depth, any true awakening, any continuity. So as we fully devote ourselves to the awakening of one center of the soul at a time, when it is fully awakened, we move to another, and so forth. While there is integration happening between them, we still need to emphasize one aspect of evolution to complete it. Otherwise, if your consciousness is not fully awakened and you move into being, you actually will begin to regress in your consciousness, and there is always a danger that you will lose everything that you have gained in your work with consciousness because unless a state is permanent, it can always be lost. When it’s truly permanent, it cannot be lost because it has become integrated into who we are. It’s like an ordinary person cannot lose their observer because it has been already integrated in their semi-conscious existence.

To reach the final depth of being requires exclusive dedication to that dimension of surrender: constantly surrendering – not just in meditation but at all times – living and connecting to other people from the depth of absorption in the source, living in creation from the unmanifested.

It is important to understand all of the components of complete consciousness so that there is no confusion about how to work towards integration of the different aspects of me and the mind.

The foundation of complete consciousness is pure consciousness, and it should be properly isolated with eyes open in order to separate pure me from the relative consciousness. The relative consciousness basically represents all the layers of me which are linked to the mind, external perception, and to personality. Pure me is the unconditional dimension of me – the one that can embody the light of I am. Originally, it is simply not present; it is simply non-existent. Without having access to I am, pure me cannot be activated because it comes into existence through the surrender of me to I am, as the subject of me’s unity with I am. If it is properly activated and embodied with eyes open, then when you close your eyes and sit in meditation, it naturally falls into the right place because the space is open. If an ordinary person closes their eyes, based on their habitual sense of identity, energy moves to the front of the head – meaning there’s no depth. With open eyes, pure me is experienced towards the back and behind the head. With closed eyes, because the horizontal element is oriented more vertically, the energetic location of pure me is in the space between the middle and the back of the head. When your pure consciousness is resting, it settles down towards the bottom of the head, in its lower portion, towards the neck. This is where the experience of restfulness is energetically located.

In order to integrate the mind with pure consciousness, the bridge of conscious me has to be solidified and awakened. It seems that, initially, human beings not only do not have access to consciousness, but their conscious me is also quite unevolved. This is kind of surprising considering that human beings have been evolving in the dimension of me for quite a while. Not only is conscious me weak and not conscious of itself, but even the observer is weak. The observer is not really conscious.

It’s no wonder that in many schools of meditation they actually work with the observer through developing mindfulness, observation, or detachment from the mind. The problem is that the observer cannot really be developed properly without connection to conscious me. In fact, excessive work with the observer in disconnection from conscious me can create too much crystallization of the mental self. When you crystallize it too much, afterwards you cannot get rid of it; it will resist surrender. Even though for certain humans who have a weak observer it may be beneficial to work on the level of the observer, this work can go much deeper if instead we begin with conscious me. Conscious me is the host of the observer, the source of the observer. Based on the awakening of the conscious me, the observer should naturally become transformed and our connection to the mind can become truly conscious. However, it is difficult to awaken the conscious me without first having our identity established in pure me. Conscious me does not need pure me to become aware of itself. But to really awaken its pure subjectivity, conscious me needs to be linked to the energy of surrender as well. Connection to pure me brings this element of surrender – absence. For conscious me, initially, pure me is the doorway to absence.

An additional difficulty with the awakening of the conscious me is the fact that we have been misusing the front portion of the head. We have lived there for a long time in a wrong way, overly identified with the mind, and have developed too many mental energies. Mental energies are the residues of thoughts. When a thought is not connected to pure consciousness, it leaves an energetic residue. When there is a flow of surrender, each thought leaves no traces – meaning it disappears, leaving empty space behind. But when the mind is not connected to consciousness, because of its fragmented nature, it leaves these energetic traces as residues which you may experience as fluctuations in the front, as some kind of energetic discomfort, or as a subconscious state. These mental residues eventually translate into a subconscious state, which is like a subconscious sphere surrounding your consciousness, encapsulating you in an energetic prison. Therefore, in working with the conscious me, at the same time one should aim at the dissolution of these subconscious energies through correctly embodying conscious me. When conscious me is embodied and there’s an element of vertical restfulness, it eventually absorbs all these mental energies and dissolves them.

Knowing how to abide in the front of the head in meditation is an art. Initially our relationship with that me is very poor, and we have the memory of using this place for the observer and the mind. So when we go there, we remember ourselves in a certain way, the way we are used to experiencing our me based on our past. And that has to transform.

The pillars of complete consciousness are the pure me and the conscious me. They both need to be present and embodied; they are like two centers of consciousness that represent different functions. If there is only conscious me, there is not enough surrender; there’s too much presence. If there’s only pure me, there’s no bridge between consciousness and the mind; there’s no continuity of recognition and surrender.

For some of you, it is difficult to embody these two centers simultaneously, and you move back and forth between pure me, or pure consciousness, and conscious me. At the beginning, it is fine because pure consciousness first has to be fully established. But you should try more and more to embody these two centers simultaneously, with the weight on pure me, which is your connection to I am. Based on that connection to pure me and I am, conscious me can gradually reach the natural state, which will in turn transform the observer and the mind.

Even though pure consciousness is the foundation of our consciousness, conscious me is the bridge into complete consciousness. Without that bridge, even though we can have access to pure consciousness, our human consciousness will remain fragmented or disconnected from our pure nature. We already spoke about the necessity to awaken conscious me a long time ago, (after the retreat titled ‘Awakening of Pure Me,’ held in May of 2011), but we did not really follow through with it. The reason for that was caution, because when one’s practice is not done skillfully, one can overly crystallize the me in the front. But even though it’s obvious that this danger is present when one is cultivating conscious me in a gross way, the fact is that the work with conscious me cannot be avoided. Without the base of conscious me, not only can we not transform our human consciousness (the observer and the mind), but we cannot even reach the completion of our embodiment of pure consciousness. After all, the light of recognition and surrender flows from conscious me into I am, so if conscious me is weak, pure consciousness will also be weak. Conscious me is the missing link in human evolution. Theoretically, logically, it was supposed to develop even prior to entering the spiritual path as an essential component of being human. But the fact is that it did not. Humanity has predominantly developed only one aspect of consciousness: intellect in combination with the unconscious observer, which is unconscious because not even the observer has actually developed. So that which we can call ego, which is the sense of self of most humans, is quite a strange creature. On the one hand, it is quite sophisticated and clever – it can engage in very complex thought processes – but it does not have any clearly defined sense of me. Seeing it from that perspective, we realize the irony in the basic assumptions of the major spiritual paths on this planet that aim at the transcendence of ego prior to actually developing this ego in a proper way. The concepts that there is no me, that the mind is illusory, that the ego is empty of substance, and so forth, are all true, but only for unconscious people. So when different meditation systems have devised techniques or contemplations to see through the empty nature of the mind and the human self based on these concepts, they have not really analyzed either the real, positive human consciousness or the consciousness which is entirely fragmented and unevolved. If a squirrel analyzes his mind, he will also not find any sense of me. But the me cannot be transcended before it is actually developed because to transcend me is not just to eliminate it, but to infuse it into our higher self. And to be infused into our higher self, that me has to have a substantial sense of presence because it must maintain its presence in the state of surrender. Otherwise, surrender will just dissolve it even more, will make it even more unconscious. Some of you still have difficulty grasping not only the conscious me but even the observer. This has to change, and the prerequisite for that change is to create an actual positive relationship with these aspects of your existence. So here we are doing two things. We are not only moving into our future self, awakening our spiritual potential, but simultaneously we are filling in the evolutionary gaps, developing that me which we wish to transcend. The safest way to work with conscious me is while being connected to pure consciousness. Pure consciousness balances the presence of conscious me, preventing it from getting caught in identification with the observer. The work with conscious me has to be done both in meditation and in activity. But the work done with conscious me in meditation is quite different from the work done in activity; it has a different flavor. The reason for that is that conscious me relates to itself differently with eyes closed than when surrendering into I am with eyes open. With eyes closed, conscious me is naturally more solidified, reaching absorption in itself, and it is more in relationship with the vertical dimension (meaning it’s resting downwards in the headspace). With eyes open, conscious me is experienced more transparently. There’s also an element of vertical relaxation, but the experience is more transparent. With eyes open, the sense of self in conscious me and in pure consciousness is more unified. With eyes closed, when you embody conscious me and pure me or pure consciousness, you are actually embodying two different centers. There is no surrender of conscious me into pure consciousness with eyes closed. Rather, they unify through vertical surrender, through absorption, while still remaining distinct. They are like two limbs of consciousness. They are supposed to be distinct, but they still belong to one consciousness; they are distinct but not split, not separated. Embodying conscious me is a direct tool to transform the observer because the observer is using exactly the same center. The observer is conscious me in action, when it is relating to objects. While in meditation with eyes closed, you can either experience conscious me exclusively, in which case the observer is absorbed in the conscious me, or you can experience conscious me and the observer simultaneously, for instance, when engaging in thoughts. It is important to learn how to experience conscious me exclusively so that it can be fully awakened and embodied, and then to learn how to experience the observer from the conscious me (not outside of the conscious me) which facilitates further integration with living in the world and using one’s own mind. With eyes open, when you embody I am, you experience conscious me from pure consciousness and the observer from conscious me. That is the hierarchy of consciousness. In the work with conscious me, having the intention to embody that identity, one has to develop a certain strength or solidity on that level – what we call ‘gathering of the energies of conscious me’. But, simultaneously, when embodying conscious me, we need to activate the energies of relaxation, gentleness, and softness. In fact, conscious me has to be embodied lovingly. In this way, it becomes linked to the soul and to its own pure subjectivity. The essence of conscious me is pure light. When it is freed from identification with the mental self, it is divine.

Continuing our previous talk about being, we will explore a bit what tools we can use to deepen our realization of being – how we can help that surrender, that absorption in the dimension of being, to manifest. As we said, one can just sit and the energy may naturally drop into being, but it will not drop very deep. However, through cultivating the art of surrender, we can accelerate this process.

Those seekers who are used to exercising a lot of self-control have difficulty surrendering into being because you cannot really control it. In being, on some level, you lose control. We can control the way we descend into being, but it is a deeper cooperation where the observer is bypassed. Shifting into being is the first step of coming to the place inside where we truly abide in the dimension beyond me. Of course in surrender to consciousness we also move beyond me, but the nature of being is even more impersonal because it is closer to the source, to the ground of absence. From the standpoint of the ultimate reality, the absolute is deeper than universal consciousness.

In order to acquire the skill of cooperation with our descension into being, we must embody our identity on that level, otherwise there’s very little control over this process. It may appear to be a contradiction in terms – surrender and control – but it is not so. There’s control and there’s control. We can actively cooperate with reaching deeper layers of absorption. That’s a simple fact. But the one who is cooperating is our deeper self, our innermost self.

The first step is to actually shift energy into being. If the energy of being is closed and we simply do not have access to it, we can experience a certain amount of relaxation but there’s no significant depth; it is shallow. So as it is with consciousness, access has to be open. First there’s the relative access, which is the proper realization of being, and then there’s the transcendental access, which is moving into the absolute state – the enlightenment to being.

Similar to how most human beings have almost no relationship at all with the back of the head space, they have very little relationship with their belly. Because of the way our civilization has developed, we have become excessively ungrounded physically and energetically.

One of the most powerful tools to shift our energy into being is breathing. Breathing, the movement of breath, is directly linked to the vital force, which, as we said, flows from the center of tantien – which is also the portal to the source. When you breathe in, energy moves up towards creation. When you breathe out, energy drops towards the source. That’s why when we are born, we first inhale, and then when we die, the last thing we do is to exhale our last out-breath. Breathing in is coming into life; breathing out is returning to the source.

Here, we are using this natural energy, this movement connected to our breath, in order to activate our surrender. We are not merely conscious of breathing; we become one with our breath and we emphasize exhalation. We let inhalation happen naturally, but with exhalation, we consciously let go. We actually flow with the out-breath, with the drop of energy towards that mysterious place where the breath ends; and in this gap after exhalation, we activate deeper letting go. Using the bottom of the out-breath to penetrate the state of being is the most powerful tool. When being is fully awakened, it becomes independent from breath. But initially, it is affected by the inherent energy fluctuation of breathing.

It’s not so much that most human beings don’t know how to breathe, but that they actually don’t know how to exhale. And if you don’t know how to exhale, your inhalation will naturally be wrong. It is common that exhalation is not complete – meaning you can notice that you have actually not expelled all the air in your lungs; there’s still some left. Your inhalation cannot be full because your lungs are not empty.

Why is belly breathing directly connected to the depth of the breath? Of course there’s no air in the belly – air is only in the lungs – but the lower portion of the lungs is directly connected to the muscle of the diaphragm. So when the diaphragm does not fully contract during exhalation, the air cannot be fully expelled. In correct breathing, you are not simply pushing your breath to expel all the air. You are falling with the breath; you are falling so deeply that you don’t even think about inhaling. Inhalation feels like an effort that you don’t want to make because exhalation is connected to the experience of rest. When you rest deeply, you don’t want to inhale. And you don’t inhale; it is the body that inhales. Usually it is not the body but you that inhale.

When we surrender with the breath, the natural outcome is that after exhalation, there’s a long gap – everything stops. Inhalation does not follow immediately; it is waiting for the body to demand oxygen. Inhaling when you do not need oxygen is like eating too much – eating when you are not hungry.

We are letting go with exhalation, diving into the space below the place where the breath ends, and resting as deeply as possible – and not just resting, but letting go even deeper. When you let go with exhalation, you reach a certain place that is the limitation of your ability to let go based on your connection to the out-breath. But after the out-breath ends, you can still let go – not using breath anymore, but something else. You are letting go below the breath.

Another tool – which is not an artificial tool or something unnatural – is to centralize your energy in your tantien, in your lower belly. You sort of concentrate there, or rather centralize yourself in this place. So it’s a combination of letting go with exhalation, and letting go even deeper towards the bottom when exhalation ends, and while centralizing yourself in your lower belly. This centralization actually assists your ability to go deeper. It’s like an arrow pointing into the unmanifested; the arrow has to be sharp, straight, and pointing in the right direction to hit the target. And the final element is to recognize who is surrendering into being, to meet the true subject to the experience of being, to meet the one who feels the absorption in being, the one who is actually surrendering, which is the pure me of being.

The center of the pure me of being is felt in the same place as the tantien.  As it radiates its energy and presence, it is felt in the whole area of the belly, but its essence, the place where it meets the unmanifested, is in the lower belly. So when you are centralizing in your hara, in your tantien, you are actually centralizing in your pure me. This is the function of pure attention; pure attention is doing it.

While we have to use all these tools to help the opening and deepening of being, at the same time we need to approach this practice with gentleness. We need to incorporate the element of actually not doing anything – just allowing being, disappearing in being, forgetting oneself in that surrender. There’s a fine equilibrium between doing and non-doing. If that balance is lost, the purity of meditation becomes tainted. Too much non-doing results in passivity, lethargy, stagnation. And, obviously, too much doing will close the door to being.

Anyone can call anything the absolute, but the true realization of the source is not present in all traditions of enlightenment. It was present in Taoism and then transmitted, transferred, into Zen. Only in these two traditions do the practices and technologies of the paths point to the true realization of the source.

The knowledge of the inner realm is very poor on this planet. There are those who call consciousness the source or the absolute. They don’t even know where the absolute is located. They would even deny the concept that it is actually located somewhere. When we speak about the location of the absolute, we speak in terms of our relationship with the source – how, from the standpoint of our individual existence, we reach the unmanifested and that we have to go through a specific portal. Otherwise, we will never know the absolute; we will only imagine it.

To deepen being, one has to sit. It is theoretically possible in the work with consciousness to reach a level of completion, at least on the horizontal level, without sitting. But with being, one must sit because the energy has to drop, to be absorbed, and only then can one integrate being or the absolute with activity. Unlike consciousness, when the absolute state is fully integrated, it is not affected at all by outer circumstances or even connecting to the unconsciousness of other people whether in meditation or outside of meditation. Your consciousness can be affected but nothing can touch the absolute. Consciousness as well reaches that perfection, but only when it is unified with the absolute – meaning it has to be in the state of absence. The absolute is the first level of perfection that a human being can reach. It is so important to reach the final depth of being because it is the true foundation for the further evolution, awakening, transformation, and transcendence of our whole existence.

After we verify that our consciousness is clear and restful, we bring our attention to our heart. The center of the spiritual heart is located in the middle of the chest. In fact, if you touch this area, there is an exact point which is the center of the heart. Of course the heart radiates energy, making the experience spacious, but there is one place that constitutes the very center of it.

If the heart is not activated, we activate it by paying attention to it. The correct attention is pure attention. As long as the heart is not open and pure me is not awakened, there is a certain duality between pure attention and the heart because pure attention cannot become rooted in the heart;it cannot enter the heart.

Firstly, our intention should be to be conscious of that area, to create a relationship with it, to feel and sensitively explore that place. Breathing to the heart helps because breath is energy. When you breathe through your heart, you activate it energetically. With inhalation you feel your heart, the place in the middle of your chest, and with exhalation you fall back into the inside of the heart, as if sinking into it, resting through exhalation in your heart horizontally. You rest towards the inside of the heart, which is a backwards movement of surrender. It is quite different than with consciousness because the horizontal depth of the heart is not a portal to the beyond, but rather where the heart of the soul is met, the light of I am. The more the heart is open energetically, the more pure attention can become anchored in it, rooted in it. As it does, you begin to experience your heart as pure subjectivity, which is just one step prior to meeting the pure me of the heart.

There is a lot of conditioning regarding the heart, and as a result you may unconsciously seek to experience it in a certain way. However, the truth is that the experience of the heart is totally different from what people expect. What is this experience? You need to discover for yourself by honestly probing, feeling, and meeting the innermost space of your spiritual heart. In fact, it is so different that initially you actually do not know what you are experiencing: it is something quite unfamiliar and new.

The human dimension of the heart which is linked to human feelings is entirely different from the heart of the soul; it is like another dimension. To put it simply, your me in your heart exists on two levels: pure me, which is the heart of the soul, and the me which is linked to the human heart. Obviously, the human heart is still present as an external dimension of the heart. The human heart, the subject of which is the feeling me, is pointing in two directions: towards your emotional body, your emotional existence, and towards the heart of the soul. This is somewhat similar to the conscious me in consciousness which is also pointing in two directions.

Embodying the heart,surrendering into the heart,takes place from two directions: from pure attention and from the me of the human heart. The human heart which is surrendering to the heart of the soul is not renouncing itself; it is merging with its source so that it can begin to experience its human feeling existence from the soul instead of outside of the soul. Through surrender to the heart of the soul, the human heart becomes empowered because it has finally arrived at the place of unconditional emotional fulfillment. Once the human heart has roots in the soul, even though it may naturally continue to seek fulfillment within its human nature, its emotional needs and feelings become transparent and gentle. The human heart without the soul can never be fulfilled and this lack of fulfillment creates the fundamental imbalance of excessive dependence on external elements. The human heart can never be fulfilled because the love that it seeks cannot be found outside – it is unconsciously seeking the heart of the soul. However, when it is ignorant, it cannot recognize this so it keeps looking outside, living its miserable existence, bound to be unfulfilled.

Through awakening of the spiritual heart and surrender of the human heart into the depth of the soul,we arrive at the balance between independence and dependence. When one has realized love within, the emotional needs of one’s human nature do not disappear but become transparent. They do not create a conflict with our unconditional inner fulfillment because our heart is full of its very self. For that to happen, first the spiritual heart has to awaken – pure me needs to be realized and the human heart has to surrender. As you are embodying your heart, you are not simply experiencing it:you are your heart. The heart becomes your identity, the center of your perceptions, the place from which you live and connect to the world.

The awakening of the heart is gradual. It is like a flower opening up and it needs time to do so fully. Along the way, it has to be nurtured and taken care of until it fully matures and is integrated into our existence as the divine aspect of our complete self. To awaken the heart does not require that much. It is enough just to be there in your heart.

As the heart awakens, it emanates its light through your whole being, affecting every molecule of your existence, including your physical body. That light is the source of grace inside your own heart, but for it to manifest you need to honor your heart. Your relationship with your heart determines the relationship of the heart with you.

We will say a few words about how to practice with consciousness in meditation when your eyes are closed. The first thing to remember is that consciousness first of all needs to be properly awakened with eyes open. For that, the doorway of I am has to be opened, which is at the back of the head. Then through horizontal surrender, which is a function of pure attention, we reach the final depth of consciousness and awaken pure me. Pure me is the aspect of me which can merge with I am.

Unless one reaches enough horizontal depth, pure me cannot awaken properly, nor can it be isolated from all the layers of the relative me and the mind. Our pure nature has to first of all be isolated, experienced in its purity, in its unconditional essence, and only then do we begin to integrate it with human consciousness and with the thinking faculty. And only when pure me has been awakened with eyes open – and pure me is in fact what constitutes true consciousness, the consciousness of the soul – can we begin to cultivate consciousness from the right place in meditation. If pure me is not isolated and established, when our eyes are closed, our sense of self, our consciousness, will very easily mix with the relative me, with the observer.

With open eyes, pure me awakens through horizontal surrender. With closed eyes, its orientation is vertical; it is acquiring the ability to abide vertically in the direction of the source. Pure me is the foundation of the work with consciousness with eyes closed – embodying it, abiding in it, and surrendering from it.

As we abide in pure me, we simultaneously experience other layers of our identity. For instance, there is thinking. Thinking can be subconscious, meaning it is happening by itself. When subconscious thinking is experienced from the proper place, from pure me, this gentle arising of thoughts does not create conflict; it’s embraced by our deeper consciousness. Then there is conscious thinking, the kind of thinking which is more linked to the observer. When conscious thinking is clear, we are willingly participating in pursuing our thoughts. We are creating them, for instance, by seeking understanding, clarity, or simply thinking about different things related to our life. Sometimes thinking is in-between subconscious and conscious. It is not fully subconscious because you have a sense of participating in thoughts, and yet it is not fully conscious because your sense of me is overly identified with those thoughts.

The observer is an extension of the conscious me into the mind and allows it to creatively participate in the thinking process. The correct observer is transparent; it does not create a separate sense of self outside of our pure nature. For the observer to be transparent, it has to be integrated through both conscious me and pure me. Conscious me is the bridge between the observer and pure me.

Pure attention is another bridge between conscious me and pure me. In the process of growing into pure me, of establishing our fundamental consciousness, conscious me is evolving as well by reaching the necessary solidity, the quality of pure subjectivity, and by becoming more and more consciously unified with the pure me. If conscious me is weak, the bridge between pure me, the observer, and the mind is weak and we are not in control of our thinking faculty. This is the usual problem – that one is experiencing the mind thinking as if by itself. In truth, the mind is never thinking by itself. it is always me thinking, however that me is too undeveloped to be able to gain mastery over its connection with the mind. Me is undeveloped in relationship to itself and in its connection to our fundamental consciousness.

So the work with consciousness in meditation is fundamentally very simple – you are simply being yourself, returning to your pure nature moment to moment, and letting go into deeper vertical restfulness and surrender. And yet this work must involve the additional development and integration of all the layers of the relative me. The relative me is of course indirectly affected by the presence of pure me. It is changing by virtue of the presence of our fundamental consciousness. However, it cannot fully transform unless, from its own perspective, it begins to surrender and becomes conscious of itself. In holistic consciousness, pure me is the foundation, and all the other aspects of me and our intelligence are fully integrated into that foundation as the natural, creative expression of our fundamental self.

Traditionally, pure consciousness is seen as a ‘witnessing’ consciousness, a background consciousness that, from its aloof dimension, is witnessing everything that is happening on the relative level. But that which we experience on the relative level, all the other layers of me, actually have their own consciousness; they are not just objects of the witnessing consciousness but have a subjective presence, and they must also become conscious of themselves. Gradually, they begin to understand their relationship with our fundamental consciousness and begin to surrender.

Transparent intelligence, which is the true mind of the soul, is in the state of surrender into the fundamental consciousness. It is not only its expression and extension; it knows its source. It knows from where it is arising. In each moment of its manifestation, it is simultaneously being reabsorbed into the fundamental consciousness. The concept of witnessing consciousness is one-dimensional and static; it does not reflect the richness of our complete consciousness. Our complete consciousness is a unified organism, multidimensional, and interconnected. Each aspect represents a different function and they all need to be unified. The base of that unification is pure me of consciousness, pure me which is in natural unity with I am.

As far as the work with consciousness is concerned, sitting in meditation is primarily about embodying pure me and resting from pure me in relationship to the source, which is energetically felt as a sense of absorption at the bottom of the head. Pure me is energetically located in the mid-portion the head. It does not have a pinpointed location; it is spacious. Conscious me, on the other hand, is felt in the front. Conscious me is in itself linked to pure subjectivity; it has a solidity of identity and has an element of being, meaning it is resting in itself. While embodying and resting in pure me, from time to time we have to check whether conscious me is in the right state, embodying it gently, making sure that it is in a clear condition, and then again fully moving into pure me.

Initially, your main focus is pure me, then gradually you try to experience conscious me and pure me in their unity simultaneously. However, the weight is still with pure me. If the weight moves to the conscious me without having established the correct foundation of pure me, over identification with conscious me can weaken our connection with pure me. That is why it is important to make sure that the weight is always in pure me; this will allow the conscious me to reach its natural condition. Conscious me becomes the true conscious me only when it is linked to I am through pure me, otherwise its sense of self will fluctuate and it will involuntarily be drawn to the observer.

So that is work with consciousness. It is not a technique; it is not a method. Everything that we have described is a reflection of who you are, of different aspects of your existence and identity. It is all you. And that you has to become unified into one self, one consciousness. When you fall into the right place inside, you realize it is not even a practice; it is just a way to be – a natural state.

There is no such thing as observing the mind. Observing the mind is an ignorant practice which creates a split between the observer and thoughts. It has no relationship with returning to our fundamental consciousness.

The observer is not the one who is practicing. The practice – the correct cooperation, the constant alignment, the tuning into our pure nature – is a function of pure attention and pure intelligence, which is the inner intelligence of our inner self, the intuitive feeling intelligence which does not create duality between object and subject. Pure intelligence and pure attention are experienced in the space of intimacy. That intimacy is fully awakened when pure attention, through surrender to I am, gives birth to pure me. It is pure me which transforms consciousness into the soul and allows consciousness to be realized not only as an energy of clarity, recognition, and spaciousness, but as love.

The clarity of consciousness is a function of its strength, and transparency, and the absence of subconscious energies. Sometimes the state can be strong and in the right place, but it is still not clear because the subconscious is obscuring it. As we embody the state correctly and add the element of surrender, all these subconscious elements gradually get dissolved and the state is left alone.

When we speak about embodying pure me, there is usually a tendency to try to do something and often this ‘doing’ has nothing to do with embodying pure me; either it is an artificial concentration or the observer is looking for something to identify with. The act of embodying is very gentle. It is almost as if you don’t do anything. You are just allowing yourself to be in your natural state and yet there is a shift from pure attention into pure me, which allows a deeper centralization in pure me to take place.

With eyes closed, this can sometimes be confusing because when your eyes are open, pure me is felt more at the back of the head due to the fact that there is horizontal surrender. In addition, there is as if a greater distance between conscious me and pure me. With eyes closed, because there is no horizontal polarity, this distance is no longer experienced, or at least not in the same way. With eyes closed, pure me is felt from the back of the head up to the place where the conscious me begins, which is the front of the head.

However, because we emphasize vertical surrender, pure me is more centralized in the middle, where the channel to the absolute is located. So pure me always orients itself in relation to I am: with open eyes, towards universal consciousness at the back, and with closed eyes, towards the source.

When the vertical and horizontal are integrated, pure me is absorbed vertically with open eyes as well. Then with open eyes, one experiences two absorptions – vertical and horizontal. With eyes closed, absorption is only vertical. That is the difference. This can be confusing because when one is getting used to horizontal surrender, one does not know how to behave with eyes closed, and vice versa.

One could ask the question: If consciousness is one, why are there all these differences? The consciousness which we experience is our individual consciousness, and its very existence is directly dependent on its relationship with the universal reality. In teachings where the soul is denied, where individuality is denied, all these distinctions would not make any sense because those teachings are not in touch with who the experiencer is, who is evolving and whose consciousness it actually is.

When practicing with consciousness, you should always try to be natural; it is better to do less than to do something wrong. When you are natural, often everything falls into the right place, as long as you are connected to your essence. The quality of clarity has to be checked on the level of pure me, which is your deeper consciousness, and on the level of conscious me.

Sometimes you may abide in your pure me but – if you pay attention – you experience discomfort in the front of your head. In particular, this can happen if one has accumulated a lot of mental energies, restlessness and energetic fluctuation in this area. This simply means that conscious me does not know how to abide in that place and does not have the force to somewhat overpower these subconscious energies through its presence.

When conscious me is gathering its presence, it is not just centralizing in itself; it is pulling all the energies of the mind into itself, because if these energies are disconnected from the conscious me, they cause the leakage of the energy of consciousness. Everything that you experience in your mind, in your head, is consciousness, but some of these elements are disconnected from its pure nature and as such are weakening your fundamental consciousness. That is why everything has to be integrated, so that we can reach true empowerment, true clarity and holistic consciousness.

When you attempt to gather your conscious me, you must make sure that you are simultaneously abiding, embodying and letting go from your pure me. This will keep the conscious me in balance and will prevent its unwanted crystallization. Pure attention also gathers the conscious me. So pure attention is simultaneously doing two things – it is gathering itself in conscious me and it is embodying pure me.

It is quite strange how little conscious me has been understood. In fact, it has not been understood at all; it has not even been identified. Conscious me is the true essence of the human consciousness. If we can imagine a human being who is evolving in the human dimension alone, in disconnection from the deeper reality, conscious me would be the very crowning of its development.

On the level of consciousness more generally, there are obviously other elements. Having access to I am, even having access to pure me – meaning pure me is on some level awakened – does not make one conscious; one can still be very unconscious and fragmented.

Contemplating further the art of thinking, first, an interesting question to ask is – from where do subconscious thoughts arise?

Most of the time, we simply do not know because they are subconscious. We get to know them when we develop at least a basic conscious relationship with them, which is when the observer connects to them. The observer can connect to these subconscious thoughts on different levels, from an entirely subconscious way – meaning the observer is actually also subconscious, but it is less subconscious than those thoughts – to developing a more conscious relationship with them. To develop a fully conscious relationship with these thoughts, the observer himself has to become conscious.

But when the observer is more conscious, not only can it connect to subconscious thoughts more consciously, it can also identify their arising, and the place from which they arise. This requires a particular type of sensitivity to feel the location from which thoughts arise. This area is felt at the upper part of the brain, corresponding to what in the anatomy of the brain, is called the superior frontal gyrus, which is the top of the frontal lobe, which ends in approximately the middle of the head. So, when you are not consciously thinking, but thoughts are still happening, arising, this is from where they arise. But of course when the observer is subconscious, he can experience subconscious thoughts also in the front of the head. But these subconscious thoughts in the front of the head are already being processed through the observer.

So, even though they are subconscious, in such a case, as we said, they’re less subconscious; they’re more connected to consciousness and the conscious intention, or even subconscious intention, to engage in them. Since subconscious thoughts arise from this area of the superior frontal gyrus, or simply the upper part of the frontal lobe, it may indicate that this is the place in the brain where the unconscious becomes subconscious, where the unconscious information crosses the threshold of the subconscious mind. The subconscious is mental information which has already manifested, while the unconscious has not manifested, is dormant. The subconscious is still subconscious because it is not linked to consciousness, or it is not linked to the observer in a tangible way. In other words the subconscious is subconscious because it’s not fully linked to the conscious sense of me.

But as we know subconscious thoughts do also have a sense of me; only, it is a subconscious sense of me. That’s why when you dream, you experience yourself to be a subject to those dreams, even though the observer is in an unconscious state. So, where do these subconscious thoughts derive their rudimentary sense of me? It is from the essence-me, and without yet going through the observer. So, there is a difference between the subconscious me experiencing subconscious thoughts and attached to subconscious thoughts, and the kind of subconscious me that is linked to the observer – which is basically the subconscious observer. The subconscious observer, no matter how subconscious it is, is still closer to consciousness than ordinary subconscious me. Sometimes, we use subconscious me and subconscious observer synonymously, but here we are making this distinction; the subconscious observer and subconscious me are not exactly the same. Even though the subconscious observer is a type of subconscious me, it is a more evolved subconscious me, or more developed. And by design, it is closer to consciousness – or closer to essence-me.

Now, we spoke about integration of the observer with the mind and the ability to think consciously. The more the observer is absorbed – the more it is linked to pure subjectivity – the more our thinking becomes pure and effortless; and thinking itself becomes connected to pure subjectivity. When the observer is in control of thinking as a rather gross center in the mind, it is a male type of thinking; the observer is like the boss controlling the thinking. The thinking, in this case conscious thinking, is willful. When the observer is more surrendered, first being conscious in itself and relaxed and more absorbed in conscious me, and there’s enough depth in the essential me to absorb the conscious me as well, thinking becomes more feminine – transparent, gentle, sensitive and effortless. This thinking is still occurring in the front of the head.

But there is another kind of thinking when the observer is more absorbed, where the sphere of thinking moves to the upper part of the frontal lobe, to this superior frontal gyrus, as it is called – at least that term corresponds to that location. There is a sense as if the observer has unified with or is experiencing unity with that area of the upper brain. In this case it has to use pure external attention because ordinary external attention cannot link itself with the upper part of the brain, and the observer has to be surrendered to consciously link itself with that area. So, to make a distinction between ordinary – well, it is not that ordinary, as we know, but the way we used to use it – pure external attention, which is operating in the front of the head, and that pure external attention which links itself to that upper cortex, we can call it pure external contemplative attention.

But before we go deeper into it, try to get in touch with that area, trying to identify that place from which subconscious thoughts arise. For this you need to allow yourself not to control your thoughts but remain in a relaxed spontaneous state of consciousness. The moment the observer captures these thoughts or their information, there’s immediate transfer of it to the front, so you need to get in touch with those thoughts before they are being captured; because there’s a certain time distance between those thoughts arising and the observer capturing them. When the observer captures them, it means that it begins to process them in the front.

You need to have a sense of curiosity, inquisitiveness. It is fascinating to get in touch with our own mind, how it operates – not for the sake of intellectual knowledge but for the sake of knowing oneself deeper.

Now, we relax into the essential me, also relaxing in pure me of consciousness, which is fundamental for having access to that deeper kind of thinking, and relaxing in the observer – the observer has to fully rest. The thinking from the upper portion of the brain – we need to somehow find a better term, so it doesn’t sound so technical – is a higher contemplative thinking. Obviously, one can experience contemplative thinking in the front when the observer is resting and thinking is experienced from our pure subjectivity, but it is a lower type of contemplative thinking, more connected to what is called discursive thinking, where you feel more to be in charge of your thoughts. While the thinking from the upper part of the brain is a deeper contemplative thinking, or higher conscious thinking; which does not mean that the thinking in the front is to be discarded – it’s also very important. They’re like two dimensions of contemplative thinking; they need to coexist, and they interchange.

So, the observer rests, and now you connect very gently to your thoughts, but directing yourself to this upper part of the head. To experience it you need to rest. The more deeply the observer is in surrender, the more you have access to such thinking. The ordinary observer – the presence of which is experienced in isolation from surrender or from the foundation of the essential me – cannot experience it. It’s like, the observer disappears and yet is still present, but in a very pure transparent way. And you can begin to think in the upper part of the frontal lobe.

Now, what does it mean? It means that you begin to think, or you enter with your conscious thinking that very area where subconscious thoughts are designed to arise. Subconscious thoughts are not only an arising of mental information and so forth, which most people experience as an invasion of subconscious thoughts they cannot control; the subconscious is also linked to intuition – for instance, when you have a sudden insight into things, like when scientists cannot find a solution, and then suddenly they find a solution, a revelation. These revelations are also arising from the same place. So what it means is that when you begin to think consciously in that area, your thinking becomes much more intuitive, and the evolution of your understanding is accelerated.

But beyond that, it’s important just to appreciate the beauty of such thinking. It’s not only for the purpose of reaching some conclusion. You are getting in touch with intelligence. The purpose of intelligence is not just to create understanding; it is a thing in itself, a dimension of self.

You rest in pure me of consciousness and you rest in the essential me, the observer – if it cannot fully rest, at least it has to be as relaxed as possible. You cannot control this kind of thinking, even though you have the possibility to navigate it. But you navigate it from the place of surrender. Another invaluable benefit of being able to think in this way, in higher contemplative thinking, is that you get more in touch with your subconscious because you are conscious of your subconscious the moment it arises, not afterwards. There’s always a delay in the ordinary observer. In this higher contemplative thinking you may feel that the observer is not there; it is there but in a very fine way. It is the integration between the observer and that part of the mind from which subconscious thoughts manifest that allows one to experience the higher contemplative thinking. Furthermore, the external attention is no longer moving forward or upward; it moves backwards, so to speak, but you don’t feel it moving backwards, because it is so transparent, so pure. In this way, it fully resembles pure attention.

You are not only thinking from the upper part of the frontal lobe, you experience your pure subjectivity there, as well as the subjectivity of intelligence, which means that a portion of the observer expands there and carries the light of its subjectivity to the upper part of the head, without leaving its natural location.

Someone asked to clarify the exact location where the higher contemplative thinking occurs. Well, for instance if your hair is falling on your eyes, and you move it back sliding your hand, this is the area, towards the middle of the head – the upper part of the frontal lobe. As we said it corresponds to the anatomical term, superior frontal gyrus, which you can Google if you want. The ability to be in touch with this area, to bring consciousness to it, allows us to sharpen the faculty of the watcher of the thought threshold because we can capture thoughts as they are about to arise, while the ordinary observer, as we said, has a delay; it can only capture thoughts that have already manifested.

It is difficult to say from which place a thought manifests; where they manifest from is that place. But where is the unconscious information stored in the brain before it becomes the subconscious? The whole brain, the memory, the subconscious information stored in the brain, is distributed through many centers in the brain. For instance the hypothalamus is responsible for long term memory, so obviously it is also responsible for storing the information. For our practical purposes it’s not significant. What is significant is to get in touch with the subconscious mind and to link it to consciousness.

Another question was about how the gravitational pull of the absolute that enters through tan t’ien corresponds to the gravity of the earth, the physical gravity. Well, we have obviously evolved such that these two gravities are somehow synchronized. However the gravitational force of the absolute is independent from the gravitational pull of the earth. That’s why, for instance, if you are suspended upside down, you’ll still feel the pull of the absolute in your lower belly.

The gravitational force of the absolute exists beyond this three dimensional reality. It doesn’t have a location that we can define physically, even though there is a correspondence in our body. Our body feels it, and it is felt in the lower belly. The absolute is the non-physical center of gravity of this universe and other universes. Should it disappear everything would fall apart.

In the event of creation, there is a separation from the force of gravity. This separation is necessary for creation to be possible – a certain expansion outside of the absolute. The purpose of creation is to give birth to, to manifest essence-me in many forms. Each essence-me is a unique angle of perception from which totality is viewed. The more essence-me is evolved; the more it is able to reconnect with its intrinsic creativity, which is another name for free will. And that free will is connected to intelligence. When that particular essence-me reaches an adequate level of evolution, it becomes conscious of its separation from the source, which is translated within us as spiritual suffering; we have been disconnected from our home state, from our original abode, from our source.

And then there is the beginning of the great return, which is the purpose of spiritual evolution; it is a journey back. But since unconscious me cannot return is why simultaneously we are evolving into realization of our individual subjectivity. And only then can we begin the process of surrender to the absolute, to counteract that outgoing movement of creation.

A me which has realized the absolute and has realized itself, represents the awakened essence of creation, and it exists in that fine equilibrium between its dissolution in the source and its expression in creation. It begins to experience the world from the unfathomable depth of the inner void, of the bottomless stillness of the source, while retaining the consciousness of itself and the consciousness of the world.

The absolute I am, which is the foundation of everything, is hidden. It’s like the ultimate secret. People look for it, if they do, in all the wrong places. Usually, they look up into the heavens, which in some traditions, is reflected in the concept of the crown chakra – some kind of ascendance; but this is exactly the opposite direction from where the secret lies, since the foundation of surrender is letting go, and letting go is connected directly to profound inner relaxation. You can clearly identify that, when you relax – energy goes down; it does not go up. Those who are up are disconnected from existential relaxation. Usually, they are too spaced out to even identify this. Usually, when people refer to relaxation, they refer to the psycho physical relaxation which is obviously a good thing, but spiritually; we are relaxing our individual pure subjectivity. We are letting go of our embodied inner identity; and before that can relax and let go, it needs to be actualized. Without that, there’s nobody inside, just the psycho physical shell of a human.

You are on both the path of awakening and the path of surrender. You are growing into your true self, and you are growing into surrender. Sometimes awakening is more emphasized, sometimes surrender; but they always need to be connected. Surrender has to become something natural, automatic, something that equals and that is inseparable from each act of existence. You are constantly letting go. You recognize pure me of consciousness, become one with it, and in that very instant you are letting go; you don’t have to think about it. You recognize conscious me, becoming one with it, immediately letting go. Presence has to be constantly balanced by letting go. The gravitational pull is constant, and we are constantly in relationship with it. Even those who are unconscious are at all times being affected by the gravity. Becoming one with surrender is becoming one with the gravitational force of the absolute. You are simply not resisting it, and you are aligning yourself with it. Because presence resists absence, it is afraid of letting go because it might disappear; it might perish, so it has this subconscious mechanism embedded in it to protect its boundaries. To transcend this mechanism, we must let go. In that letting go we do not disappear; in fact, we discover the ultimate security of being.

To sit in meditation is to rest in the creator. That is the true meaning of meditation.

One of the most important skills is to learn how to use the observer from the place of embodying the other three centers of the essential me.

And when we go through these guided meditations, you need to make sure that you are well connected to pure me of consciousness. This should go without saying; you just need to be always one with pure me and resting vertically in pure me.

When the observer is used in a correct way, first, it does not weaken our connection with the other three centers. Second, which is an important thing to contemplate, the observer should be effortless; there should be a sense of complete ease in the observer and how it connects to thoughts. If the observer is working too hard, it means that either it is the false observer, or it is not integrated. There is a certain similarity between the experience of intuitive me and the correct experience of the observer; they are both in the state of no will. On some level it feels like the observer is not there at all because its sense of self is infused into the other centers.

Here, we also have the matter of integrating the external attention. The external attention, by design flows in the opposite direction than pure subjectivity; it flows towards an object. But if the observer is in a correct state, the use of external attention does not create a conflict; it feels more like an effortless pleasant extension of our base subjectivity, which in turn changes our relationship with so-called objects. They no longer feel external; they don’t feel any more like a foreign reality outside of us. They begin to feel increasingly as being contained in pure subjectivity, which is the very principle of the realization of oneness with the world.

And before we even speak about the oneness with the world, you need to realize oneness with your own mind. First, we rest firmly in the three centers of the essential me. You don’t always have to separate them in your practice; you can experience natural unity between them, but sometimes it’s good to separate them to make sure that all the aspects of the essential me are in the right place, such as making sure that fundamental me is resting deep enough, and so is pure conscious me, and that conscious me is embodied. When you pay attention to these three centers, the observer is also engaged; it is the one who is verifying the experience. But because you are paying attention to these three centers, the observer is relatively suspended from its interaction with the mind. You can observe that each time you get lost in the mind is the time when you forgot to recognize your pure subjectivity.

So, now that you recognize this, you just don’t have enough energy to think. Of course you can think, but the energy invested in thoughts is much much weaker. Since the observer is relatively deactivated, it may be more difficult to feel it. We already spoke about that. So, you need to feel the observer at rest. The observer at rest is very close to the conscious me, so it’s very difficult to distinguish between these two, but they are quite different. The observer is the outer layer of the conscious me.

Getting to know the observer, getting in touch with it, is an essential part of the journey into knowing yourself. In the ancient temple in Greece, the temple of Delphi, there was written the sentence, ‘know thyself’. What the true meaning of knowing oneself is, always eluded humanity. It is a journey, and it is not just doing, it is giving birth to yourself, which is the whole process of awakening and activating your potential to become who you are meant to be. In that sense, we can distinguish between knowing who one is and knowing who one is meant to be. A seed knows himself to be a seed. To know himself to be a tree, he has to become a tree.

So getting in touch with me of the observer is an essential component of getting to know oneself. The observer is not just the faculty behind your thoughts, it is an intimate aspect of who you are, and it is the center of intelligence. And intelligence is crucial; intelligence makes us who we are. Now while resting in the three fundamental centers of the essential me, we activate the observer in a stronger way by connecting to thoughts. So, there’s the intention to be in relationship with the mind. It does not have to involve actual thinking, but it might, as well. When the observer is involved in thoughts, he has some interest in those thoughts. But his priority is to remain connected to his pure subjectivity and the pure subjectivity of its foundation, which is the conscious me.

Now, try to think without any effort, in such a gentle way as though you were not there. The observer is relaxed. The false observer does not know how to think without effort; the only way to relax is to space out, and to fall into subconscious thinking. Subconscious thinking is effortless, at least to a degree, but it is disconnected from pure subjectivity; and an excess of subconscious activity inevitably leads to the energy of consciousness becoming depleted. We spoke about the contemplative thinking from the observer; one of the characteristics of such thinking is that it is effortless – you’re not actively thinking, even though you have an intention to contemplate your thoughts.

An intention is just an intention. To have an intention does not mean that an effort is involved. It’s the same with the intuitive me; it is effortless, free from will, and yet there is intention – first, intention to become one with intuitive me, then perhaps an intention to engage in higher contemplation.

So, the observer is resting, very gently connecting to thoughts, and each instant that it connects to a thought, the observer relaxes – meaning instead of moving into a thought with its identity, it moves into conscious me. And then you can experience another observer, the kind of observer, which is effortless, which can engage in thoughts in an entirely effortless way.

Sensing this effortlessness in your thinking is one of the signs of progress on the level of integrating the observer. So, one of the prerequisites for contemplative thinking is effortlessness. If this effortlessness is absent, one is experiencing regular thinking. In regular thinking, there is a linear relationship with thoughts, like the observer is behind, thoughts are in front, and one is trying to navigate through them. In contemplative thinking, there’s less of a duality between the observer and thoughts. And thoughts themselves, are integrated with pure subjectivity. That’s why thoughts are experienced in a blissful way. And their frequency is the frequency of consciousness.

One of the most important skills in the work with essential me is the ability to merge within the conscious me and the center of the observer. This type of merging can also be regarded as a type of internal samadhi, but it is happening within exclusively, without the boundaries of a singular center.

In general, we speak of internal samadhi as either the observer merging with essence-me, in contrast to observer being vertically absorbed in conscious me, and conscious me merging with pure conscious me, in contrast to it being vertically absorbed in a state of pure rest. In such internal samadhi, one center is merging into the other, and it is more than just unity. When two centers are unified, there’s no sense of separation, but they are still distinct. But with respect to conscious me merging with itself, or the observer merging with itself, it is another type of internal samadhi.

And the ability to merge within conscious me is very important to allow us to reach a deeper unity between conscious me and pure conscious me because conscious me resists surrender; it’s like its self-recognition is in conflict with its vertical surrender. That internal merging allows one to transform that excessive presence and bring the faculty of self-recognition to the higher level where it is no longer in conflict with surrender. And of course, it also allows us to develop a deeper relationship with essence-me – with pure attention merging with essence-me. Conscious me is not just essence-me conscious of itself; it is like a new organism or new being of a new dimension of pure subjectivity, which is still rooted in essenceme, but with something added to this essence-me. But essence-me is like a core, a kernel of the conscious me and still remains being this kernel, even if the conscious me is awakened.

Conscious me is a unity of pure attention and essence-me. And within this unity there is a relationship between pure attention and essence-me; and that relationship can be superficial or it can go deeper. In that merging within conscious me, you are simply deepening the relationship with the essence-me. Pure attention is merging with essence-me, and by doing this, it comes closer to the original light of the immanent I am, which is hidden in the essence-me.

That merging is something that you need to learn how to do. You need to use your intuition; you need to employ a certain skill. It is done very sensitively, gently, lovingly; there’s a loving energy to it. For instance, as you rest in pure conscious me, you become one with the conscious me, embodying it; and then you try to rest from conscious me in pure conscious me, and there is still a certain sense of excessive duality between these two. Then you merge within the conscious me, and what happens is, suddenly you don’t really know whether conscious me is separated from pure conscious me or not because you have released a certain portion of excessive presence from the conscious me; and perhaps you can find yourself naturally absorbed in pure conscious me. But as we spoke before, that merging in the conscious me can have a certain negative consequence, of diluting conscious me too much. That’s why as you merge and then somehow fall into pure conscious me, you repeat this process – you embody conscious me again, and you merge with it again. There’s like a fine place where merging with conscious me and its embodiment become integrated.

Now, we go through a very similar process with respect to the observer. So, you are resting in a combination of conscious me and pure conscious me – primary me. Then you activate the observer and you become one with it. The thing is that you can sometimes experience the observer being one with conscious me naturally, when the observer is very relaxed. But the problem is that when it is so relaxed it tends to become simply subconscious. So, its relaxation has to be integrated with consciousness. But when you try to integrate it, when you try to bring more consciousness to the observer, suddenly you see that it’s not so easy to surrender it, because as before with conscious me, now the presence of the observer resists surrender.

So, when you feel the observer in a clear way, what you do next, is you merge within the observer. On some level it is perhaps even easier than merging with conscious me; when you merge within the observer, the observer is merging with itself, and it has no other way but to simultaneously fall into conscious me, fall into its primary identity. Or even like that, you can experience the first level of internal samadhi, where the observer merges with the conscious me, just by changing its relationship with itself.

Now, you can combine these two; you are merging within conscious me, first making sure that conscious me is connected to stable pure conscious me – there has to be the vertical stability. So, you merge within the conscious me, and then you merge in the observer at the same time. So, pure attention is merging with essence-me in the conscious me, which is one type of internal samadhi, and pure attention is merging as well with the secondary sense of me or the observer. And the byproduct of these two types of merging is that the observer merges with the conscious me. In fact, it merges as well with the essence of the conscious me, which is essence-me. This is no surprise, since conscious me is its primary identity. So, the secondary identity merges with the primary, and the primary merges with itself. You can experiment with that, and it has to be done in the context of vertical surrender. Pure conscious me and fundamental me give stability to conscious me and the observer. Without that stability, this process is impossible.

The destiny of the observer is to merge with the conscious me; that’s where it reaches its correct state. It returns home – because conscious me is the home of the observer, being its primary center. How to surrender that observer is the question. It’s something that you need to contemplate and get acquainted with.

Of course, the first challenge is that the observer has to become conscious. If it’s split from the conscious me, it just keeps doing its own stuff. If you experience too many thoughts, it’s always an indication of the observer not being conscious and not being integrated. But for the observer to become conscious, it has to be linked to conscious me. And the conscious me has to rest in pure conscious me; it’s all interconnected.

But one center resting in another center is not a complete solution. That matter of merging within the observer and within conscious me is like the secret of the transformation. Some of you have difficulty really grasping what it means to merge with the conscious me – meaning how conscious me can merge with itself, and then how the observer can merge with itself. And it’s fine to have these difficulties; difficulties are part of the path. But we also learn how to transcend difficulties, which is evolution.

Before we even speak of merging of the conscious me with itself or the observer, the first thing to contemplate is – what is your relationship with the conscious me, and what is your relationship with the observer? Both are experienced as me, as subjectivity. But what is that relationship of that me with itself? So, we are speaking here about seeing these things in a higher resolution – entering the mystery of that subjectivity. One can be just present as the conscious me or as the observer. That is a good starting point, but it is not the end of evolution there; one has to go deeper.

In the past, people believed – philosophers, scientists – that the world is composed of the tiny particles called atoms. An atom was supposed to be like an undivided substance from which everything is made. Later on, they discovered that an atom is not undivided, that it is composed of different dimensions, that it is alive. It’s not just a piece of matter; it is a microcosm in itself. So, in a similar way, we contemplate those atoms of presence, and enter inside, discovering what is hidden within them – less intellectually, even though we still contemplate these matters conceptually, but more experientially. Presence is like an atom that is not conscious of what lies within it. And that’s why that presence has to melt down to reveal what is beneath its surface. And the tool for doing it is the deepening of your relationship with your very me.

So, contemplate how you feel your conscious me. How does it feel? The first step is to bring softness into the experience, tenderness, loving energy – meaning you are already creating a deeper relationship with it. Through this tenderness, you are already softening the rigidity of presence, and you link it with the substance of the soul, with the consciousness of the soul. This tenderness and loving energy is not psychological; it is existential. It is pure feeling. Everything that you experience that is real, you feel. Feeling is the primal tool of recognition. But you can feel in a superficial way or you can feel in a profound way. And this is determined by how deep your relationship with yourself is.

The next step is to go deeper than just feeling conscious me tenderly; you need to melt into it. You’re entering inside it, where the essence-me is hidden, which is like the core of the conscious me, and where, within that essence, the light of I am is hidden. So, you are entering the microcosm of the conscious me. This internal melting into conscious me – and the observer – has to be mastered. It’s not something difficult to be done, but it is something very very subtle, so one needs to have this sensitivity; and if one does not have it, one needs to develop this sensitivity. This internal merging is applicable to conscious me and the observer. It does not apply so much to other centers, even though it also can be found in the intuitive me – which is not a surprise, considering that similarly as the observer; it is a center of intelligence.

Now, you can shift your attention to the observer, experiencing it in a relaxed way but feeling its sense of me clearly. If the observer is eluding you, you can focus it slightly. And that part of you which is feeling the sense of me of the observer, which is pure attention, surrenders to that sense of me and melts into it. And now, you shift your attention to conscious me, melting into it and making sure you are linked to pure conscious me and that there’s a vertical surrender. And now when you are sweetly absorbed in the conscious me, melt inside the observer simultaneously. And then you find that the observer naturally merges with the conscious me; it feels like it is experienced inside the conscious me.

The observer is not actively merging with conscious me or trying to merge with conscious me. By merging with itself, and if the conscious me is embodied, it naturally falls into the conscious me because conscious me is its primary center.

If you go back, you remember the process of shifting from the self-conscious observer to conscious me; it had already begun then, but more as a way to activate the conscious me – not to merge the observer with conscious me because at that point, the conscious me was not there, yet. First the foundation of the conscious me needs to be established, and then the observer has to evolve in a parallel way to become more conscious, more stable, more transparent. And eventually so that it can return to complete unity, it merges with the conscious me. But the most important message of this guided meditation is the deepening of your ability to merge with the conscious me and the observer.

You should not remain stuck in a condition of mere presence. Presence is not the final goal; it is a doorway to the divine inside us. In the experience of conscious me and the observer, one has to become conscious of the most subtle duality between pure attention and essence because this duality is what allows that dynamic relationship to exist; otherwise, there would be just presence. When we speak about tenderness or self-love, who is tender to whom? Pure attention is tender toward essence-me, at least in the realm of the essential me – meaning we actually begin to develop a relationship, becoming conscious of the internal dynamics in that so simple and yet so rich experience of the conscious me. And then we go deeper because pure attention can go deeper into essence-me, not just staying at the periphery, the surface of it.

We are divine, but this divinity has to be revealed from within. If not, it is just a nice concept, but we don’t experience our divinity; we have no access to it. It is covered like an underground spring is covered by the earth. We have to remove the obstacles, so it can come to the surface of our conscious experience.

The three centers of the essential me – the observer, conscious me and pure conscious me – are fully interdependent, meaning that how each one of them is experienced in isolation depends on how the other two are integrated or merged with it. For instance, to experience conscious me truly correctly, the observer has to be absorbed in it – meaning the primary center is dependent on the secondary center. And without experiencing absorption in pure conscious me, conscious me does not have the power to absorb the observer into itself. So, there is a very fine dynamics between these three centers, which deserves deeper contemplation.

To embody conscious me deeply, you cannot do it without including the observer; the observer has to surrender into the conscious me to provide that complete embodiment. So it is a double embodiment; pure attention embodies essence-me, and the observer embodies its primary center, which is the essence-me. But the observer cannot embody conscious me unless it first embodies itself. So, the concept of internal samadhi is very important, and there are a few ways it manifests. The observer has to merge with itself – that is, pure attention has to merge with the secondary center of the essence-me. Then conscious me has to merge with itself, which means pure attention is merging with that primary center of the essence-me. And the byproduct of that is that the observer merges with the conscious me. By merging with itself, it also merges with the conscious me; it’s not that it first has to merge with itself and then try to merge with the conscious me. It’s the same when the conscious me merges with itself; it naturally merges with pure conscious me. So that internal merging is a doorway to the other center which is below.

Before one attempts to merge in this way, one should first verify that there is enough vertical restfulness. Conscious me has to be supported by pure conscious me, and pure conscious me needs to be supported by fundamental me. In this way, conscious me reaches stability, and based on that stability the observer also reaches stability – a certain place of motionlessness. And then, this merging can be initiated, this internal merging. So, you rest first in the fundamental me, then in pure conscious me, then you are one with the conscious me; conscious me sits on top of pure conscious me.

And now how can conscious me merge with itself? What do you actually do to help it? You can perhaps experience difficulties here or be confused, and continue being confused the whole retreat, or you can find the solution. This is why you have intelligence, and this is why you have intuitive intelligence – to intuitively solve your problems and to intuitively recognize what we are talking about. You need to be creative; this is what intuition is about – it is the creativity. Intuition sometimes fails; sometimes it is not sharp enough, but that doesn’t matter. What matters is to be creative, to expand your internal imagination, sensitivity, and spirit of inquisitiveness – the inner force; there’s someone sitting there that has a force, a dynamic force of creativity.

So, the conscious me is there, just waiting for you to merge with it. And the solution, the answer how to do it, is also there. It just has to be unraveled. One has to experiment, approach this from different angles. If you try too hard, it doesn’t work because you are doing too much. All great things are done from the place of effortlessness.

You need to lovingly melt within your conscious me. Instead of experiencing it as a dry presence, you need to relate to it as the divine inside you. Conscious me is like the zero point of me; you cannot come any closer to who you are, but you can still be stuck on its surface. You need to enter its embryo. That merging into conscious me, within conscious me, is done in the context of vertical restfulness; that’s very important. And now where is the observer? What happened to it? Do you feel it? It is very close. Become one with it and melt inside it as well. And as you do this, you see that the observer actually merges with the conscious me.

And then you realize that the byproduct of these two mergings or three mergings is that you have merged with pure conscious me – conscious me merges into itself, observer merges into itself and as a byproduct it merges with the conscious me. Pure conscious me is no longer below conscious me; conscious me is inside it.

We spoke about the higher contemplative thinking, which happens to occur in the same area where the subconscious thoughts manifest in the mind, in the upper part of the frontal lobe. Usually, this area is disconnected from consciousness and just operates on its own. And the observer is just catching those thoughts that arise and is trying to make sense out of them. This area is not just the area of arising thoughts, it is also the area of intuition, intuitive thinking. Not all thoughts are intuitive, of course. Most of them are meaningless, at least for an average person.

But to be connected to that place, to develop a deeper relationship to that place, allows one to open that faculty of intuition more deeply. Now, when the observer is absorbed, especially in its internal samadhi in the essence-me, on some level it becomes deactivated, and we cannot use the front part of the head for thinking. Then the center of our thinking moves to the upper part of the brain, the superior frontal gyrus. Before, we theorized that the observer expands into this area in order to link itself directly to that place from which thoughts manifest. The observer cannot think unless thoughts manifest; he needs the material from the subconscious. And then through its creative process it creates thoughts and creates understanding. But even as it creates understanding, it still needs the material from the subconscious.

However, it is not true that the observer expands into this area of that higher contemplative thinking. The observer is deactivated, and what happens is that a new center of intelligence is formed, a higher center of intelligence, the one which is present in the top of the frontal lobe. That center of intelligence is quite different from the observer; it is much more refined. It is not in such a dual relationship with thoughts as the observer. There’s no sense of distance between that center and thoughts. There’s nothing like external attention that links that center to thoughts, even though that center is in relationship to thoughts. Furthermore, that center can be experienced without thoughts; it can be just present because it is also experienced as pure subjectivity. That is the higher center of intelligence that, in order to come into existence, requires one to be in complete surrender. Everything has to be in surrender, especially the observer.

This realization gives us the sense that a being can exist without an observer and yet have intelligence and evolve in its intelligence. The thinking that we ordinarily process through the observer is linear; it is just a more gross level of thinking.

Even the observer can experience contemplative thinking; it is just the lower contemplative thinking. In higher contemplative thinking there’s no observer, and such thinking is just much deeper, much more refined, and it is directly in touch with the source of universal inspiration, that place from which insights arise, the place of revelations.

When people hear about the word ‘revelation’, they assume that it comes from some other place; somebody whispered it to our ears, and suddenly we know the answers. That is a complete misrepresentation of the word revelation. Revelation occurs in intelligence; it is a part of intelligence revealing higher understanding to itself. That’s how intelligence evolves. But for our individual intelligence to be more open to a higher understanding, it needs to be connected to universal intelligence, which is the ultimate source of inspiration. However, being in this place of higher contemplative thinking, is not just a means to gain some insight or to gain more understanding, it is just the right place for intelligence to be. Intelligence also needs to be and to be in touch with itself. To be in a state of the bliss of contemplative thinking, is a reward in itself.

When the higher center of intelligence is experienced without content, it is immersed in the field of the potential of intelligence. This is like a reflection in our individuality, of the mind of god – how the mind of god is experienced.

Only complete surrender allows us to access this faculty, and activate from within the very depth of the soul, the higher center of intelligence.

There might be some confusion regarding the term, the 5th eye because in the past, not on a regular basis, but at some point, we referred to the 5th eye as the deepest point of realization behind the 4th eye, behind the point where pure me of consciousness enters universal I am, at the place where the universal me is realized. That point of realization of the universal me, when pure me of consciousness embodies universal consciousness, we referred to that area as the 5th eye. Well, at this point we stop using it in this way; we’ll use the 5th eye as equivalent to the realization of, or as the area in which intuitive me is realized. The 5th eye in the old sense does not have much practical application, even though obviously universal me itself does. So, there’s like a triangle – third eye, 4th eye and 5th eye in the dimension of our head.

Pure me of consciousness is accessing universal consciousness, and intuitive me is accessing the universal intelligence. Obviously, in our intuitive intelligence, when we embody it, we experience first, the individual dimension of intuitive intelligence, but at the same time, it is intertwined with universal intelligence.

For an unconscious person, that area of the 5th eye is the place where subconsciousness is experienced – personal subconsciousness, which stems from the accumulation of personal memories and collective memories of human kind. It’s a storehouse of the personal unconscious that manifests as the personal subconscious. And that personal subconscious or personal unconscious is also intertwined with the universal subconsciousness. The reason that we often speak about the dangers of going up, connecting to the crown chakra or however it is understood in that human spirituality, is that connecting to it in an unconscious way, links us to the universal subconsciousness. That’s why all those kundalini practices are entirely misguided. They are trying to elevate up an unconscious individual, who has never solidified his sense of me, and is not connected to the source of existence. However, that same area, when it is embodied with consciousness, with pure subjectivity, becomes a bridge to universal intelligence and higher intuition.

To properly enter and embody the area of the 5th eye, one has to have solidified restful essential me, and one needs to awaken pure me of consciousness because the intuitive me is the emanation of pure me. If one does not have pure me, one cannot experience intuitive me. It is not enough to be present or to feel some kind of attention at the area of the 5th eye; one has to awaken proper pure subjectivity, the higher presence of the center of intuitive intelligence.

One of the characteristics of the intuitive me is that it is effortless. One cannot maintain it through any type of concentration. There might be an intention to connect to intuitive intelligence and to feel oneself there. But that intention is not what is forming intuitive me; intuitive me has to arise. And for it to arise, one has to deeply rest in fundamental consciousness, and the observer has to get out of the way. The observer has to be deactivated; it has to fully rest.

Now someone asked about the difference between pure intelligence and intuitive intelligence. They have similar qualities, but pure intelligence is still linked to the observer; it is intelligence of the observer that is in the state of samadhi. The center of intuitive intelligence is no longer the observer; it is the intuitive me. So, these two are entirely different dimensions of intelligence. The purpose of intuitive intelligence is not just to gain an understanding, even though this is the place of revelations, where revelations spring up out of the source of wisdom. To be one with intuitive intelligence is itself understanding. It is not just a means to reach higher understanding; it is also a goal – to be in the state of understanding, in the state of universal knowing. It is like being in a state of intelligence. The state of intelligence is another awakened state.

We spoke about different ways of creating a conscious link with the intuitive mind. As we know the intuitive mind exists in the same location as the subconscious mind. So, when does the subconscious mind become an intuitive mind? It depends on our conscious connection to it.

How does an average person – a person who is perhaps more connected to his or her intuition than other people – connect to this intuition? It is known that scientists or philosophers often rely on their intuitive mind, waiting or tuning in, in their minds, in order to receive different insights into solutions to the problems they wish to solve. How do they do this?

They connect to their intuition in an unconscious way, which works more or less in this fashion. The observer is pondering an issue or a question deeply, seeking for the solution within its linear dimension – meaning it’s trying to solve the problem using his logic, his reasoning. And there’s a point where it cannot go any further because the linear mind simply does not have the answer and cannot produce the answer through its own efforts. Then when these limits are reached, the observer relaxes but is still waiting for the answer to come; this question or the problem to which one is seeking the solution is still kept deeply in the mind. And the combination of the relaxed observer, or the observer which is somewhat getting out of the way – it is obviously not the proper relaxed observer, the way we define it, but the relaxed observer so to speak – plus that question which is kept in the mind in a subtle way, creates the connection to the intuitive intelligence, and sometimes the answer or the solution manifests itself.

We should not look at this matter simplistically; it’s not that the subconscious mind or the intuitive mind has all the answers, and that we just need to wait for these answers to manifest. The intuitive mind is a creative process; it is looking for the answers, and whether these answers manifest or not – the insights or the revelations – depends on the evolution of that intuitive mind. Different people have experienced different levels of evolution in their intuitive intelligence. The more we are connected to it, the more it can evolve, but then again, it most commonly evolves in a specialized way. For instance, if you contemplate spiritual matters, your intuitive intelligence will grow in a spiritual direction. The intuitive intelligence evolves in a certain direction similarly to the way the ordinary mind specializes and the ordinary intelligence specializes, depending on the interests of a person, his background and so forth.

So, while that unconscious way to connect to intuitive intelligence can work to some extent, obviously a higher way to connect is consciously. We spoke about the contemplative observer. The contemplative observer is already connecting to his own intuitive dimension; it’s not just seeking the answers through his discursive thinking. He’s tuning in to and already connecting to intuitive intelligence. Many of the answers or insights that one may seek can already be accessed through the contemplative observer, through that lower contemplative intelligence of the observer. But to connect deeper to our contemplative intelligence, we have to go to the source, which is the higher contemplative intelligence, intuitive intelligence. Awakening of the intuitive me allows us to enter this area directly, not just be connected to it but to actually be there.

When we are present in intuitive intelligence directly, it obviously has a profound effect on the subconscious mind. The subconscious actually becomes conscious – not conscious in the sense the conscious mind is experienced from the observer, but it crosses the threshold of consciousness; it is the intuitive conscious mind. That intuitive conscious mind is conscious in a different way than the conscious mind itself because it is an area where thoughts themselves cross the threshold of the unconscious; they are emerging into the conscious, while in the ordinary conscious mind we are dealing with thoughts which have already manifested, and we are processing them through our intelligence. So, the conscious mind is processing manifested thoughts, and the intuitive conscious mind is processing thoughts that arise from the unconscious – at least that is one dimension of the intuitive mind because the intuitive mind is also dealing with thoughts that have already manifested.

That process of arising from the unconscious has an element of the subconscious mind, but since it is immediately met by our consciousness, in this case embodied as intuitive me, the moment it crosses the threshold with the unconscious it becomes illuminated as conscious. The unconscious mind feels the presence of the intuitive me, and our intention from say being engaged in a certain contemplation, will affect what kind of thoughts or information crosses the threshold of the unconscious.

In subconscious thought, the subject is subconscious me. Subconscious me cannot be separated from the information the thought carries. But when intuitive me is present, the subject to thought is the intuitive me. As we can see, our goal is to integrate the whole consciousness, so not a single stone is left unturned.

We spoke about the two levels of contemplative thinking, the lower level that occurs from having the observer as its center, and the higher, which is done by intuitive me. The fact that the contemplative thinking from the observer is lower does not mean that there’s anything wrong with it. It is still a very high level of contemplative thinking. That level of contemplative thinking is experienced in the forehead, and for this to happen, the observer has to be resting, ideally it has to be the pure observer in vertical samadhi.

This type of contemplative thinking is very different from the usual thinking. It does not feel like thoughts are in front of you, and you are trying relate to them or to navigate through them. There’s a certain intimate unity between the observer and thoughts. Some of that contemplative thinking occurs in the upper part of the forehead, as if coming closer to the intuitive intelligence. And it is very internalized. It is infused into pure subjectivity. This kind of contemplative thinking, even though it is lower, so to speak, is not something to transcend; it still remains a part of our holistic intelligence. The observer is not to be transcended through the intuitive me; it is meant to complement it. Contemplative thinking of that sort is done from the observer which is in a state of surrender, so it also has this feminine quality, the quality of no will as well as the quality of bliss.

The higher contemplative thinking which we call intuitive intelligence is activated when the observer is deactivated. In many situations the observer cannot be deactivated because it’s responsible for our interaction with the world. But in deep meditation or when we are not involved in external circumstances or in the regular mind, the observer can relax completely to the point of being deactivated. Intuitive intelligence obviously is present also when the observer is present if we are fully integrated. But it somehow shares its space with the intelligence of the observer. It also depends on how much the observer is involved. For instance, when the observer is relating to the world through vision, the visual observer, but the mental observer is absorbed, one can fully experience the intuitive intelligence and embody it, if the visual observer is relaxed.

Now, we spoke about connecting to intuitive intelligence through pure attention, but the question still remains how to activate the intuitive me. First, we need to rest. We need to be in a state of, if not complete surrender, as least profound relaxation through all the centers of the essential me as well as pure me of consciousness, which here is also important. Then from that profound restfulness, which is at the same time linked with our intention to connect to intelligence, the intuitive me arises. And it can arise properly, only if we are resting down in our consciousness.

The closest metaphor that we can come up with is the law of buoyancy. The intuitive me floats, goes afloat; it moves above the water of that fundamental consciousness which is resting, as if some mysterious force was bringing it to the surface of that water of consciousness. If consciousness is not resting, the intuitive me cannot come to the surface, cannot be afloat; it sinks down – in other words, it disappears. It needs that foundation of restfulness of the fundamental consciousness, which is basically the whole consciousness, being at rest. It cannot be done through effort; it has to be allowed to happen, even though a certain subtle cooperation is required.

The location of the intuitive me is slightly below the top of the head, but it is inside the head. Now, usually in cases like this, people ask about the crown chakra and stuff like that. And the thing is, we do not really wish to relate to this because the concepts related to the crown chakra are connected to people of very low consciousness, spiritual morons. So, even trying to relate to the concept does not feel right. Forget the crown chakra, forget all that idiocy, and simply connect to the center of your higher intelligence. Someone is thinking there, someone who is very pure. It is me, but so different from the usual me and so different from the observer; it’s much more subtle. It has more of a universal and divine quality. But do not forget about the law of buoyancy; make sure that you fully resting so that intuitive me can come afloat.

It is difficult to grasp, to know how to behave with the center of intelligence which is not the observer. It’s like our consciousness has to be reconstructed; you need to learn how to function in a completely new way.

Someone asked, how is it possible that the observer, as the center of our intelligence, is the one who initiates the awakening of the essential me, conscious me and the other centers? The observer does not directly awaken pure conscious me or fundamental me, obviously, but its intention is what gives the direction to pure attention so that from conscious me it can flow into pure conscious me and into fundamental me. It’s interesting that only in respect to awakening of the conscious me, is the observer actually directly involved. Usually, we say that the observer is not meant to be the doer, is not meant to do the awakening, is not meant to be directly involved in establishing our pure subjectivity; it’s role is mostly to activate the intention, and to maintain the continuity of intention and attention. For instance, when you forget pure me of consciousness, who is the one who recognizes that you have forgotten? It’s the observer that has to verify this. So, it’s initiating pure attention, directing its flow, based on its intention, but in his identity, it’s not directly involved. It stays in the background. The only exception is awakening of conscious me because this is reached through a certain cooperation in the observer which involves self-absorption and vertical relaxation. But of course, such an observer is already linked to pure attention because that which is being self-absorbed in the sense of me of the observer is pure attention.

The observer is the one who starts this journey consciously, because the journey begins in our intuition – it is our intuitive self which triggers our spiritual longing – but it has to go through the observer for it to become conscious. But the question is how is it that even though it is the observer initiating or beginning our entry into the path and into the essential me, it can itself very well remain subconscious, or it can keep falling into subconscious states? One can be deeply established in the primary me, having connection to fundamental me, but the observer can fall back into a subconscious condition, can basically become the subconscious observer or the false observer. The answer is that the observer is simply the part of our consciousness that is the most difficult to integrate. The observer is like this person who is giving good advice to everyone but is not following it.

The observer is a creature of habit. Conscious me, pure conscious me and fundamental me don’t have any habits because they never existed. But the observer was there for a long time, and there is an aspect of the observer which is collective – meaning it’s not really yours personally, even though you personally are using it. The observer exists in the context of the subconscious mind. The subconscious mind is like a mind program that has been created through countless experiences, memories and interactions. The majority of it has been conditioned from the outer world, created through your childhood education, life circumstances. It is a very sophisticated computer program that keeps reprogramming itself. Even though the root of this program remains more of less unchanged, it is modifying itself, which is called learning, or adaptation.

And of course there are also the negative influences – the subconscious tends to create different layers of negativity because it is linked with the emotional center – fear of survival, and so forth; and the observer exists in this context. Its sense of me in an ordinary person is entirely defined by that context. Furthermore, the observer is the only part of human consciousness initially that gives us a sense of being in control. Even though that me is subconscious, still one has a sense of having some kind of a subjectivity that serves as a stable point within our countless psychophysical experiences.

So, the bottom line is that the moment you use the observer, it tends to remember itself as it used to be. It follows its old habits, its conditioning. And this conditioning is so deep that there’s a part of the observer, or a part of the observer’s intelligence, that does not believe in all the spiritual stuff <laughter>. It believes intellectually; it can be convinced. But the moment it starts to relate to the world or relate to the mind, it actually changes its belief system; it has something like a subconscious belief system, which is the belief system on which our personality is based, our human self. If you look at an average person, this person is a type of belief system.

And we do not speak here about their religious convictions, or other convictions, because these are more like the superficial layers of that belief system that can be easily changed – a Christian can become Buddhist and so forth. But there’s a deeper belief system which defines that subconscious creature of the human self. The human subconscious is basically very uncivilized. You know that we have parts of the brain, like the mammalian brain or some deeper parts of the brain which developed before our cortex developed, which control our body – blood circulation, instinctive responses, etc. So, the observer, false observer, is of course connected to the more developed part of the brain, but even that more developed part of the brain is actually very much uncivilized, very primitive.

This is why we so emphasize the importance of the observer becoming conscious – first, to make it conscious in situations which do not require much interaction, in which the observer is not busy to actually get in touch with this observer, and then we learn how to make it conscious in activity. All of you have this experience that the moment you are busy, particularly interacting with other people, that part of you which is the observer becomes unconscious. The thing is that even if you are able to maintain pure consciousness in activity, it does not mean that the observer is conscious. It is a kind of paradox that you can embody pure me of consciousness, while talking to another person, but the observer is actually unconscious. And another scenario is that the part of the observer which verifies that you are in a state of pure consciousness, is conscious, but another part which is relating to another person, talking, etc., is unconscious.

Through our spiritual discipline and practice of self-remembrance, we are actually training the part of the observer which is responsible for the internal checker. But the other part of the observer that is more externally oriented has to become conscious as well. I have countless experiences, even in private meetings where the person becomes unconscious on the level of the observer in a situation which should be inspiring and inducing for that observer to be conscious, but still they forget. This forgetfulness on the level of the observer is just so deep. The fact is, if you are not conscious on the level of the observer, you are simply not conscious. There’s more to consciousness than the observer, but to be conscious on the level of the observer is like the basic thing that defines us being conscious.

One of the reasons why the observer is resisting becoming conscious – other than its habitual tendencies, its addiction to personality and the mind – is the lack of its internalization. We spoke a lot at the beginning of the retreat and in the middle about contemplative intelligence, and this is something very important to grasp. Unless the observer becomes contemplative, it cannot integrate with the outer world. When you speak to another person you should not speak from the ordinary observer, you should speak from the contemplative observer. The contemplative observer is experiencing its thoughts inside its subjectivity, and the spoken words, which are like the thoughts said out loud to another person – meaning that you do not feel that your thoughts or your words are moving in front of you, as if your words are moving from your head to the other person. It’s similar with the visual observer, by the way. When the visual observer is unconscious it feels like external attention is moving out from the head as if disconnecting from the space in the head in order to recognize the object outside. Both the visual observer and the mental observer need to be internalized.

For the observer to be really conscious, it has to have the foundation of the three centers of the essential me; otherwise, it cannot maintain its sense of self. Not only do the other centers need to be present, they need to be resting. The observer has to feel itself connected to a deeper dimension of itself which is resting. This restfulness of conscious me and pure conscious me has a profound effect on how the observer feels. Even if it’s not yet fully conscious, it is already affected by it. Then the observer has to become conscious with its subjectivity, basically being one with itself. It’s not a big deal; the observer is just conscious of its sense of me. And then it has to relax. Its relaxation naturally creates a connection to the conscious me.

The external attention of the observer has to be internalized. In other words, external attention has to become contemplative. If you open your eyes, if you talk to another person, and you feel your external attention is leaking, it’s too exteriorized; and you need to recognize it and correct it. When you speak to another person, you should feel like this conversation is happening in your pure subjectivity. And it’s the same with the visual observer; you should feel the other person being seen in your pure subjectivity. This is one of the aspects of realization of oneness with the world. There are two levels of oneness. One is static oneness, where everything that you perceive feels contained in your pure subjectivity. The second level is dynamic oneness, where you are actively engaged in the different things in the outer world, but still it is all experienced in pure subjectivity.

Of course part of you knows that the other person is outside of you; or else, this would be a case of spiritual insanity, which can sometimes happen. If someone reaches some kind of awakening without understanding the nature of it or without integrating, one cannot separate oneself from an object. So, certainly you can clearly recognize that objects, everything that is outside of your individual self – including your individual consciousness, your physical body, and also your personality – is external to you. Without it being external, you could not be in relationship with it. This is the basic duality that allows creation to function. But the thing is that even though you recognize an object of another person as being outside of you, you still experience them in your pure subjectivity. And this is something you need to contemplate in your practice.

Continuing the subject of integrating the observer with the principle of pure subjectivity and transforming our relationship with thoughts – learning how to activate contemplative thinking.

Let’s do a short practical guidance. First, make sure that you are in the conscious me, pure conscious me and fundamental me. And now activate the observer – not really thinking, just the intention to check if there are any thoughts or to link the observer with thoughts before actually thinking.

As we mentioned before, before the observer actually thinks it needs to decide what to think about. When a person is in a chaotic state of mind – has no pure subjectivity – it is difficult to grasp this. But when you have the basic presence you can recognize that before the observer is thinking it is as if thinking what to think about. These are not yet thoughts, but more like the intelligence beginning to be activated. Intelligence is not thinking. Thinking is intelligence in motion. Intelligence is prior to thoughts. And the observer is the identity of that intelligence. So, when you truly feel the observer, you are actually feeling intelligence.

So, you rest in conscious me, pure conscious me, and you activate the observer. How does it feel? Something is arising or is being brought into focus on top of the conscious me. It’s like the external layer of the conscious me. And you are one with that sense of me of the observer while simultaneously being in conscious me – ideally resting in conscious me and pure conscious me. And now while maintaining all these links, you try to think intentionally – simple thoughts, like ‘what to make with my life?’ or even repeating a single thought, no matter what.

So, what happens when you think while being connected to conscious me? First, for a person who is not experienced, not integrated, it’s difficult to think because he or she is not used to thinking from a deeper place. The ordinary mental observer is thinking in a very different way; thoughts are very exteriorized; there’s a certain linear relationship with thoughts; thoughts are in front, the observer is behind them. When you are connected to conscious me, and the observer is also conscious, it automatically changes the relationship of the observer with thoughts. You don’t really need to learn how to think contemplatively, you just need to change the position of the observer so that the observer becomes contemplative, and then your thoughts are contemplative. The more the observer is resting, the more intelligence is contemplative.

One of the characteristics of contemplative thought is that you feel your thought. There’s an element of feeling in your thought; it is not just mental information. You feel it because thought is linked to your pure subjectivity. So, you feel thought as an extension of me. As you think in this way, you need to do it effortlessly. This element of pure will needs to be applied – meaning there’s intention, but there’s no effort.

Now, there’s a difference between effortlessly thinking without being actively engaged in your thoughts – a type of subconscious thinking – and that when you create your thoughts. Then intelligence is consciously speaking to itself, trying to gain understanding or draw a certain conclusion, but it is effortless; the observer is not working hard, it’s absolutely relaxed. It’s resting, and is directly linked to the restfulness of conscious me and pure conscious me. You should feel your thinking within your pure subjectivity, not outside of it.

Now, the next step, when you feel the observer and conscious me and are resting in pure conscious me, then self-absorb the observer, melt into it. At this moment you can experience it merging with the conscious me.

Now, without losing this quality of self-absorption, try to think about something. Now, here you can experience two kinds of thoughts. One is on the level of the primary observer, the one which is absorbed in the conscious me, the center of which is the primary observer. And second is when your thinking shifts to the intuitive observer. It’s like that primary observer absorbed in the conscious me doesn’t want to think. It can – it is a particular kind of thinking from that place – but it prefers to remain in that thoughtless state in sweet absorption in conscious me. And here is where the intuitive observer takes over. And as you know, the intuitive observer is experienced in the upper part of your forehead. So, we have here this principle of buoyancy. The observer is fully settled in conscious me, and the intuitive observer arises, upward.

The question is, can the intuitive observer think about your ordinary thoughts, related to your ordinary life, to your daily issues? It can, but it sort of doesn’t want to. It is more oriented toward deeper thoughts, thoughts which are connected to deeper meaning. This is why we call it higher contemplative thinking, which is naturally spiritually oriented. And again, the intuitive observer doesn’t have to think; it can just be present there as the pure subjectivity of higher contemplative thinking or the pure subjectivity of higher contemplative intelligence.

The interesting thing about the intuitive observer is that it is not resting at all. In that sense it is not directly linked to the vertical dimension. It is not in the category of resting or not resting. It doesn’t have to rest because its presence has absence naturally integrated inside it – meaning it is free from its presence. Its presence is not constricted in any way.

The intuitive observer is arising; it’s floating up, like a balloon. And then it reaches a certain point where it stops. It’s like a balloon that reaches the ceiling and then it stops moving up. This is where its natural location is, and where it can then be more deeply embodied and self-absorbed.

It is really important that you learn how to activate contemplative intelligence because if you fail to do this, you’ll always be split between your mental self and your soul. Not only must you naturally experience contemplative intelligence in meditation, but also in all situations, such as conversations with other people. And since conversation requires also having the visual observer active, you also need to activate the visual contemplative observer. The visual observer has to also be internalized.

So, having the foundation of conscious me, pure conscious me and fundamental me, then becoming conscious as the observer or making sure that you are conscious as the observer, you are learning how to think from that place, then making sure that the observer is resting, is fully relaxed.

Then to experience even deeper contemplative thinking you self-absorb the observer and learn how to think from that place. At the beginning it can be confusing because the observer feels deactivated. But it is deactivated only on one level. On another level it can still link itself to intelligence.

Then when the observer is self-absorbed, you are learning how to think on two levels of contemplative thinking – from the primary observer and from the intuitive observer, and try to recognize the slight shift between these two centers, how the center of intelligence shifts from the primary observer to the intuitive observer. It is rather impossible to think from these two centers at the same time. Usually one thinks, and the other returns to a non-active condition.

What is the final goal of the spiritual path? It’s an important question. One does not have to have the answer to this question, one can simply evolve in the right direction, like a river that does not need to know where it is going, even though it is going to the ocean.

We use several terms to describe that goal. One is spiritual wholeness – to become whole and complete spiritually. Second is a goalless goal, or the infinite goal, which we call evolution in perfection. There are two sides to our evolution in this reality. One is evolution away from imperfection, where we go beyond our limitations, beyond our sense of separation, beyond our suffering. And to truly move beyond all these, we need to attain perfection. Perfection is the nature of the fully realized soul. This perfection should not be confused with psychological perfection or creating some kind of a perfect personality or being a perfect human being; it is an internal perfection, a perfect realization of our pure nature where nothing is lacking. And of course this realization occurs in conjunction with reaching perfect samadhi in the transcendent I am.

But when this perfection is reached, does evolution stop? Do we freeze in some kind of a static samadhi, like the sages of India always dreamt of – sitting in the oblivion of oneself? No, it doesn’t, it begins, but it begins in another reality, in another realm, the realm which bears little resemblance to this reality of the earth, which is spiritually speaking, a place of spiritual retardation where everyone is completely unconscious and reaching awakening of me is considered an awakening, which is ridiculous. Not to embody our me is absurd. The fact there is such a reality is actually surprising, but there is, and we are living in it every day, and we just agree to take it for granted – that absurdity, that degradation, that undignified state of being. So, what is considered an achievement in our reality, is in the inner plane a natural state. Imagine that the child is born into their complete soul and unity with the source. This is the correct birth. Then you can say you have given birth to a soul, to a human being, and not to a fragmented creature that does not even know who he, she or it is.

Evolution into perfection is moving away from imperfection, and evolution in perfection is an expansion of intelligence, consciousness, being and love into that which is already perfect and is just becoming more perfect. Here, one does not evolve because one is suffering, because one is lacking something; rather, one is evolving for the sake of expansion, for the sake of evolution because that is the nature of reality, it has to evolve. If it stops evolving, it gets degraded because evolution is one with time, and time has to move into the future. Time is the constant unfoldment of the future. And how much of that future is unfolded is determined by the level of intelligence of the subjectivity which is embodying that movement into the future.

So, what is the goal of spiritual evolution in this plane? Becoming whole is one goal. To become whole you have to awaken your true self. But your true self can be awakened to different degrees. The concept of wholeness implies that you are fully actualizing your potential, that you awaken on all levels.

And then there’s the concept that we used to use, but not so much anymore, which is transcendence. What does it mean to transcend. The concept of transcendence is present in different traditions. It is called moksha or liberation. What are we getting liberated from? Some assume that to be liberated means that our sense of self becomes annihilated or dissolved, or as Buddha thought, that we cut off the very mechanism through which we reincarnate – in original Buddhism, Theravada of Hinayana as it was called. Later on, the level of evolution was measured by how many times one has to return to this planet. There was the one that has to return two times; one was called one returner, meaning it is his last lifetime, or perhaps the next lifetime is his last lifetime. Finally, he does not have to return, therefore he has dissolved into nirvana. That is one way of looking, not necessarily the most accurate.

First of all, liberation has nothing to do with whether you reincarnate or not because such a concept is based on a very negative perception of this reality. And it is not this reality that is negative in itself, it is the limitation of our own consciousness. This reality is not just an objective singular place called earth. This reality is a meeting of many worlds. If one person has evolved to embody his pure subjectivity while another one lives in that pitiful observer, they are actually living in two different worlds. They can have a conversation because they meet on the physical plane. They can even have sex, they can share emotions, but they are actually living in completely different worlds. There are many worlds and often they intersect, but it doesn’t mean that they become the same. They are still different realities.

So what is this liberation? What is this transcendence? What are we transcending actually? Is transcendence like our me merging with the source – meaning through the source, the unity with the source, we get emancipated from our own sense of self? Is it the cutting off of the mechanism within our subconscious of the endless desires, cravings which cause us to reincarnate – because that subconscious self is so obsessed with these desires that it is actually causing itself to come back? But is it so? Or is liberation some kind of grace, that god can receive us in inner kingdom, and we don’t have to come back? Or is it seeing through the illusion of being a separate self, where one does not even need to be liberated because there is no one to be liberated in the first place; that which wanted to be liberated is seen as unreal.

These are important questions. And no one has really gone in depth to answer these questions because spirituality on our planet is just highly unintelligent. It seems that people who are unintelligent are very drawn to spirituality. It’s not a joke, it is a fact. People who cannot cope with this reality and drawn to spirituality, and usually they cannot cope with this reality because they are not intelligent, and they transfer this lack of intelligence into their spiritual search. And then if they are successful, they become masters of their traditions; they create Buddhism or advaita. This is how it all begins from the lack of intelligence. And at the root of this lack of intelligence is not wanting to understand, not really wanting to understand; it is wanting to find an easy solution and escape.

Liberation and transcendence have nothing to do with reincarnating or not, especially since most human beings will never reincarnate anyway. If they fail to solidify their me, they will be dissolved upon death. So, are they already liberated? Transcendence is not about merging with the unmanifested or expanding into universal consciousness – me seeking transcendence by referring to something which is external to itself; and that transcendent subjectivity from the standpoint of me is external, it is like the inner externality or the external innerness. Obviously, there is a great peace, great relief in reaching unity with the transcendent I am; finally one can rest, one can taste the bliss of absence.

But this is not transcendence. Transcendence is more hidden, and it is hidden within us. Transcendence in this case is not different from awakening; it is the innermost awakening. It is the realization of our original core of the immanent I am, that which we have been and which we still are, before the arising of essence-me. So, the portal to transcendence is self-absorption, in this case immanent self-absorption or immanent samadhi. We become liberated through our own self. So, at the end what we discover is that transcendence equals immanence. Transcendence is immanence.

Therefore, transcendence is a secret, since our me and its essence have been denied for centuries by the false prophets of non-duality. And by this, the chance to reveal this secret has been tragically diminished. Everyone is taking you away from yourself, seducing you away from coming closer to the secret of true freedom which is hidden inside yourself. When you truly understand that transcendence is immanence, this causes you to completely change your relationship with your evolution and yourself; it revolutionizes how you see the path. It profoundly transforms that very intelligence which gives direction to your evolution, which defines what your next step is.

Many of you have the common issue of excessive emotional fluctuation, which is experienced primarily in the solar plexus region. We spoke about the fact that it’s difficult to work with emotions because the emotional me is by definition subconscious, and you cannot make it conscious. You cannot separate the sense of me of emotional me from the emotional experience.

Being conscious of the solar plexus, relaxing it, breathing, connecting to being, awakening of the pure emotional me or emotional pure me – these are different tools to deal with this issue, to pacify the emotional center. We said that there is a direct connection between the observer and the emotional center. They are both centers of the personal self, centers of personality, plus the feeling me. But actually, there is more connection between the subconscious mind and the emotional center than between the observer and the emotional center. Emotions are not actually generated in the solar plexus; they are generated in the mind. The solar plexus is just the place where these emotions are being processed or being formed as the actual emotional response, the emotional energy.

Why are emotions experienced at all? What is their purpose? It is mostly to mobilize us to action. It is not by chance that the emotional center is also called the power center because it is a center of emotional power, where we gather the power to mobilize us to action, to the correct response to whatever is happening. What is the purpose of the emotion of fear? It is to motivate us to prevent danger. Anxiety on the other hand, which is a type of fear, is a premonition of danger. The danger has not been identified, but we are sensing a danger, and this results in the experience of a certain nervousness; our breathing changes, and so forth.

The nervous system of the solar plexus which is inside this area – not on the surface, but inside horizontally – controls our breathing and the fight and flight response. But before there is an emotion in the solar plexus, something has already happened in the mind. The subconscious has already manifested a thought of some kind – sometimes very unnoticeable, like an impression – that is then triggering that fear. Then the solar plexus responds, and then the observer is trying to do something about it. First, it is trying to rationalize it, and sometimes it takes some action.

The thing is that the subconscious mind is not necessarily rational; it is very much irrational. And it is not conscious, so it is not doing things consciously; it is just circulating its habitual thought patterns. It is subconsciously trying to assure that everything will be ok, that there’s no danger threatening us. And the more it indulges in its negativity, the more these patterns are reinforced; the mind becomes programmed into negativity, into fear and everything that is attached to it. For instance, anger is one of the strategies to deal with fear. Anger is a type of false empowerment. Of course, not all emotions are wrong. Inherently they are neither wrong nor right, and they have their purpose. Sometimes when we feel fear or nervousness, there might be a good reason for it. At first, it is being intuitively recognized in the mind; then it is being consciously experienced in the solar plexus.

But the fact is that something like 95% of these fears and anxieties are irrational; they are self-generated and do not represent a correct response to the necessity of the moment, and they are simply toxic, poisoning our system. Any negative thought or emotion floods our body with stress hormones because it is the stress hormones that connect the subconscious mind with the solar plexus. Hormones are information that travels through the blood stream to different centers in the body. There are positive protective hormones, and there are stress hormones. For instance, estrogen is a stress hormone; progesterone is a protective hormone. On the one hand, the stress hormones create stress if one has too much of them, and on the other hand, reinforcing our stress through the mind creates those stress hormones. So, it’s like a vicious circle. Having too much of these stress hormones is detrimental to our psychological wellbeing, but also to our body. They create cancer; they create all kinds of ailments.

Understanding this helps us to become more responsible for our emotions. If you really care about your wellbeing, you need to bring more consciousness to your emotional responses and take more control over your subconscious mind. The indulgence in negativity has a price that is just not worth it to pay. You might think that you would feel certain anxieties in your solar plexus, but if your mind is completely empty and the subconscious is still, suddenly you don’t feel anything in the solar plexus. You feel pure emotional me, resting. You feel a certain positive empowerment, which is emotionally neutral.

We spoke in this retreat about getting in touch with intuitive intelligence, but the other side of it is to get more deeply in touch with the subtle subconscious mind, and how it creeps in; you don’t even notice it is happening. Speaking of the negative mind, you need to recognize just how the most subtle thought arises that has a negative message. It’s mostly revolving around self-protectiveness. And the self-protectiveness can translate itself as fear, a fearful emotion, nervousness, and then of course, anger, blaming others. We are not going to go into this matter because it is something that probably can be analyzed for hours, but that’s not the point.

The point is that you need to notice as this subtle thought arises and is about to trigger an emotional response, and you need to drop it. Don’t believe in it; don’t give it energy, don’t fuel it because it’s like adding gasoline to a fire. The thought is a like a spark, and you are adding gasoline, and it becomes a flame. You can observe this in ordinary human interactions because it’s often triggered in connecting to other people, even though of course you can experience it just being alone because you are processing all that stuff in your mind.

You need to learn how to interact without an emotional context, without bringing all this baggage – constantly protecting yourself, your self-image, feeling threatened, feeling unappreciated and so forth. It is all complete nonsense. We often have a situation, like in a retreat, where someone is doing a service and is being notified that it is not done properly. The person even feels hurt. How ridiculous can it be? There’s too much ego, too much self-image, too much lack of confidence in who one is, so one becomes overly dependent on all this feedback from the outer reality, from other people. So, no matter what is happening when you relate to others, make sure you’re emotionally quiet, your solar plexus is relaxed, at ease. And if you notice this is not the case, consciously help it to happen, to relax. And don’t forget it starts in your subconscious mind. The solar plexus registers it only afterwards.

Working with the solar plexus, as we often do, breathing, relaxing there, connecting it to being, is an indirect approach, which is of course valid, but the more direct approach is to trace the conception of the emotion in the subconscious mind, and let go of it at its root.

We spoke yesterday about the portal or tan t’ien which lies at the borderline between pure conscious me and fundamental me. We can refer to it as the tan t’ien of pure conscious me, since pure conscious me is the first one to access it.

There are two levels of entry or opening within this portal. The first is just an opening without any actual passing through it. When pure conscious me reaches the absolute I am, when it becomes absolute pure conscious me, it doesn’t move through that portal, but that portal becomes like an open doorway into absence for it. Pure conscious me realizes the state of pure rest, absolute rest. Then based on that foundation, conscious me reaches such absolute rest, becoming absolute me, and based on that foundation, the observer is reaching absolute rest, which is what we call the pure observer. These three centers – pure conscious me, conscious me and the observer – are in the state of vertical pure rest, in the state of absence. In this way, we have accessed the first level of our evolution through the portal of pure conscious me. It has become an open door for the three centers to reach vertically absolute restfulness.

The next level is when conscious me becomes absorbed in pure conscious me, merges with pure conscious me, which also includes, as we know, absorption of the observer, resulting in the realization of absolute I. Absolute I allows us to experience vertical absence in a stronger way because now conscious me has reached that threshold of the portal into absence. Before, conscious me was experiencing that absence through pure conscious me; pure conscious me was like a mediator, a space in between. Now, conscious me is directly in the absolute I am, which allows one to realize the absolute I am in a stronger way; the realization is simply more powerful.

After that the next level of surrender is activated where we enter deeper into that tan t’ien or through that tan t’ien. That absolute I enters through it into fundamental me; it crosses that threshold. And that threshold is at the bottom of the frontal lobe. One can experience absence without crossing this threshold just by the fact that the portal is fully opened. But crossing that threshold, passing through that tan t’ien allows us to realize absolute I am even deeper. When absolute I merges with fundamental me, not only will we have realized the absolute I am, we have embodied it.

So, the first level of merging with the fundamental me involves a deeper realization of the absolute I am, but this place in which absolute I has merged with fundamental me is also a threshold, entry way, to the primordial I am. It is a type of primordial threshold where the absolute I am intersects the primordial I am. And how to cross that threshold? How to cross that line from embodying absolute I am into the actual primordial I am?  Where is the doorway to primordial I am? Even if absolute I, already in unity with fundamental me strives to extend the limits of its surrender, it will still not reach primordial I am because the doorway to primordial I am is immanent, and to enter that doorway, we need to activate self-absorption in the absolute I which has now merged with the fundamental me. That deepest self-absorption, we can call immanent selfabsorption.

Realization of the immanent I am equals instant unity with the primordial I am. In that sense, immanent I am is not really a portal or doorway, essence-me is the doorway. One has to pass the doorway of the essence-me through self-absorption in order to embody the light of immanent I am, and then unity with primordial I am is instant.

The challenge here is to cross over from ordinary self-absorption where the absolute I is self-absorbed in essence-me to immanent self-absorption where the hidden chamber within the essence-me becomes revealed – the shrine of immanent I am. Immanent I am exists beyond dimensions. It is dimensionless – it’s not up, it’s not down, it’s not back – it just is. Merging with the immanent I am is the final act of pure attention.

For essence-me to access immanent I am, to activate immanent self-absorption, it has to be in a profound state of vertical surrender. It has to be in this perfect surrender, so perfect that even the surrender of the absolute I, from that standpoint is imperfect. Absolute I is in a state of absence. Primordial I is in a state of absence of absence. The place where absolute I reaches unity with fundamental me is a threshold between absence and absence of absence.

In that sense, for essence-me to actualize immanent I am it not only has to be free from presence, but also from absence, from the kind of absence which is realized through the absolute I am. The meeting of absence realized on the level of absolute I and the absence realized on the level of fundamental me, which is like a meeting of two absences, brings one to that threshold where ordinary absence can be transcended. And then we can enter into the temple of the one who is the source of absence and presence, the one who exists beyond dimensions, the hidden – not only from manifestation, but also from the unmanifested – one undivided nameless god of primordial I am.