Introduction
No one can know what I’m doing inside myself, except me and Consciousness. It’s a kind of privacy we have in our relationship with God—a kind of quiet, loving intimacy.
– Mark Dyczkowski
Consciousness lies at the basis of everything. Therefore, most powerful way to change your life is to expand your awareness of being conscious. When your awareness of consciousness changes, you will find that situations in your life miraculously improve.
Many years ago the English architect Douglas Harding was in India in the mountains. He looked across a vast expanse in the Himalayas. One moment he had the conventional understanding that his head was a small circle in a larger circle (that vastscene) which contained it. The next moment he had the experience that the scene he was looking at was actually inside his head. He had no head: awareness was a blazing entity that sat on his shoulders and contained everything he saw. For him on that day it was not a theory or an insight; but a direct experience. This experience changed him forever and he wrote his famous book, On Having No Head, which is a witty treatise whose essential point is that nothing we see, hear, feel or think is outside our awareness. Harding had performed the action of anusandhana, or unification of everything with the light of Consciousness. He had united the subject and the object or, perhaps more properly, had absorbed the object into the subject (see Theory of Reflection).
Everything is Inside Consciousness
Consciousness is the perfect medium of reflection. The light of Shiva‘s Consciousness is like an infinite perfectly polished mirror in which everything in the universe, every thought, feeling, moment and person is reflected.
– Abhinavagupta
Your consciousness is the perfect of reflection. The light of your consciousness is like a perfectly polished mirror in which everything is reflected. If I say, “think of an orange”, immediately, as in a perfectly polished mirror, your mind can think of an orange.
Consider the world you create while dreaming. You create a universe within yourself that seems objective. You feel that you are just one character in your dream and your world is filled with other people. When you wake up you discover there had been no one but you. It all took place within you. Kashmir Shaivism says that one day we will awaken from the dream of our waking existence to discover the same thing. There is no one else here but me. All this, this whole universe, is the play of my awareness. And even though I see many, there is only one of us here.
Everything in your life that you know, you know through your own awareness. Every person, every fact, every thought, every fantasy, every fear, every event, every outside object, is always registered in your awareness. You cannot know anything outside of your awareness. Thus there is no universe outside of your own awareness. Wherever my awareness falls, those objects it perceives exist. Whatever my awareness does not perceive does not exist for me. If I try to imagine something outside my awareness, my awareness is imagining it.
Consciousness is the place of worship. Consciousness is the sacred text. Consciousness is the way. Consciousness is the place of sacrifice. Consciousness is the fire. Consciousness is the place of ritual union. Consciousness is the place of samadhi. Consciousness is the Awakening. Consciousness is the dwelling place of the gods. Consciousness is time. Consciousness is space. Consciousness is the jar, the vessel out of which flows the divine. If man knew that he himself was God and heaven and hell were inside him, no illusions would have a hold on him; nothing could limit his consciousness.
Spirituality is about consciousness, and whatever expands consciousness serves to open up subtler realms of experience, thereby leading to a more fulfilling life.