There is a reality at the heart and source of all of us, which is the extremely subtle Brahman. When we sit in silence, that light sense of subtlety which becomes apparent, that radiance of the heart, that presence, that meditative wave, is extremely subtle. What is the source of this? It’s not the thinking mind. It’s not an emotion. It’s not activity. This spiritual reality, the extremely subtle, is the imperishable Brahman. The knowing of this is the higher knowledge. So what is its knowing?
‘Brahman’ is the word used in Vedanta but we must give it a more meaningful and immediate name: ‘consciousness’. Now, what is that? Right now, something is experiencing all of the knowing. Something which is extremely subtle.
Is there anything at all you can do about consciousness? Can you affect it? Can you turn it on or turn it off? You cannot. The power of consciousness, all by itself, is radiating as you, in you, around you, from you, right now.
An alternative word for consciousness is ‘awareness’. I’m pointing out to you that, as a category of your experience, awareness is the grandest, vastest, biggest, most consistent, most secure element of your entire life. The mind is not secure. The emotions and the moods, the actions and motivations in life are not secure. They’re coming and going, important in the moment but not secure. Awareness or consciousness is experiencing everything, has been secure since the moment of your birth to today and will be secure nto the future.
By the word ‘consciousness’, we do not mean thinking. It is not a movement of the mind at all. It’s like light. When light shines in a room, every detail of the room is illuminated by the light. If the details changed because we decorated the room or took the curtains down, the details of the room would change but the light would not. The light illuminates everything continuously, constantly, without any gap.
To know and see that is the higher knowledge. As the Upanishad says; the knowing of higher knowledge is that knowledge by which everything else is known.
What is that which is my absolute security, my total ground? It’s consciousness. Now we’re not used to this. You literally are consciousness rather than a thing. It doesn’t seem like that but it comes to seem like that with spiritual investigation. It seems that my person, my body, my mind, my life is what I am but that is not the reality of what you are. What you are is consciousness itself.
You feel a sense of continuity about your life. You remember being a child, you remember growing up. There’s a sense of being, being me which is continuous throughout your life to date. What is that? There is definitively a real truth about you which feels like a continuity of me. What is it that is producing that sense? It’s consciousness. It is consciousness itself which is producing that sensation of ‘I am here’.
Consciousness is intimacy, the intimacy of Being, and that’s a reality for everyone everywhere. If you don’t know that, it’s because the mind is ignorant, perhaps distracted, not interested, perhaps stuck or reliant on opposite concepts and ideas. But the higher knowledge by which all is known destroys that ignorance and brings about this seeing of what is.
Consciousness is the phenomenon by which knowing is happening. The details of what happens are important. We want to live good lives, successful lives, meaningful lives, satisfying lives. So that’s the lower knowledge. All the time life’s happening, you’re aware of it, you know it, you’re feeling it. It’s apparent to you. That’s because you’re conscious, you see, you know, you experience and consciousness is something. It is something, but it’s something extremely subtle, as the Upanishads say, and all of spirituality talks about this in different ways as the spirit, the heart, ‘I’