The reason I created this website is because I noticed something in the early 2000s that shocked me. It was and is the most surprising thing that ever happened to me. I couldn’t find a clear, unequivocal mention of it in any published book (it was harder to do literature searches in those days because the Internet was less developed) so I wrote an article about it and published it. That article became the home page of this website. If I remember correctly, for about eight years, until I added this blog to the site, it was the only page on the site. It’s still the home page.<\/p>\n
(1) The discovery was the fact that I had been unconscious for nearly every minute of my life.<\/p>\n
(2) I discovered this by contrast during moments when I was less unconscious. I thought those moments were very significant. I thought they were the gateway to liberation. I called that gateway “the aware state”.<\/p>\n
I numbered those points so I can refer to them. It’s been clear to me for several years that (1) is true but (2) is false. <\/p>\n
I should have rewritten or removed that page years ago but I procrastinated because I wasn’t sure what to replace it with.<\/p>\n
I’m still not sure what to replace it with. At the moment, the bottom third of the article is crossed out to indicate that it’s wrong but the article is still there. The article is still useful for helping people realize they are unconscious, but the implication that this by itself leads to Self-realization is wrong. <\/p>\n
There are many spiritual teachers who make the same mistake, including some well-known ones.<\/p>\n
Since I started this blog I’ve tried to stick to a rule of not describing my experiences until long after they happen to ensure that I’m not overreacting. But I followed that rule with “the aware state” (I noticed it around 2002 and published the article in 2007) and it didn’t stop me from making a mistake.<\/p>\n
So I’m going to break the rule now and tell you where I am today to give you an idea why I’m retracting Since December I recognize something which is completely apart from the aware state. <\/p>\n I can’t think of a good way to describe it. “Knowing, nothing but knowing.” I’m trying to avoid cliches like “pure consciousness” and “consciousness without an object.” It’s like a very clear sense of “I know” except there’s no “I”, only the verb, and there’s nothing else besides the knowing.<\/p>\n Compared to this “knowing”, the aware state is an object like any other object. <\/p>\n This knowing is completely “subtle.” It is absolutely<\/i> subtle, so to speak, because it has no extension in the ordinary dimensions where we expect to find things that exist. Maybe this leads people to describe it as nothingness.<\/p>\n I think the possibility of attending to this “knowing” exists only when all objects are disregarded including the awareness of the aware state. <\/p>\n It’s at another level from the aware state (which is really a family of objects).<\/p>\n This “knowing” seems much more promising than the aware state as a gateway to liberation. Closer to whatever Ramana meant when he said “find the source.” This is probably the real reason why I’m not disappointed by the lack of results with the aware state. <\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The reason I created this website is because I noticed something in the early 2000s that shocked me. It was and is the most surprising thing that ever happened to me. I couldn’t find a clear, unequivocal mention of it in any published book (it was harder to do literature searches in those days because […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5858","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6YVpx-1wu","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/freddieyam.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5858","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/freddieyam.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/freddieyam.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/freddieyam.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/freddieyam.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5858"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/freddieyam.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5858\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5867,"href":"https:\/\/freddieyam.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5858\/revisions\/5867"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/freddieyam.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5858"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/freddieyam.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5858"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/freddieyam.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5858"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}the article<\/del> part of the article. Here’s an email I just sent to a friend.<\/p>\n\n