"Know that by knowing which everything is known." --Mundaka Upanishad 1.1.3

Do you remember anytime in your meditation when you feel moments of inner silence and stillness, when you are beyond all thoughts? Are these moments associated with the feeling of inner expansion or happiness? There is an underlying state of consciousness, pure consciousness, that allows us to experience this inner stillness and happiness. Pure consciousness is non-changing. It is pure awareness itself, that which supports all other states of awareness.

It is possible to experientially locate this state of pure consciousness. It is present in between each thought. It is present in the moments of still silence during meditation. It is present in the junctures between waking, sleeping, and dreaming. It is possible to "catch a glimpse of pure consciousness" in any of these circumstances. At these moments, our attention catches the shine of this underlying awareness, just when it is not veiled by other states of consciousness or a barrage of thoughts. The human mind experiences this contact of pure awareness as a "gap," a timeless interlude of nothingness that leaves us feeling deeply relaxed, peaceful, and expanded.

Why does direct contact with pure consciousness give us these experiences? The answer is that pure consciousness, although without any qualities itself, contains the essence of SAT-CHIT-ANANDA. SAT is pure existence, wholeness, truth. CHIT is consciousness, wakefulness, and awareness. ANANDA is bliss, happiness, and contentment.

In these moments when we are in direct contact with pure consciousness, we know that knowing by which everything is known.

--Nafeeah Kim Johnson.

Let's Get Started

Science endeavors to be objective, but poets have recognized the universality of consciousness through their own subjective awareness. Below follows one example from the poem "Tintern Abbey" which was written by the poet William Wordsworth:

“… and I have felt 

a presence that disturbs me with the joy

of elevated thought; a sense sublime

of something far more deeply interfused,

whose dwelling is in the light of setting sun,

and around oceans and the living air,

and the blue sky, and the mind of man:

a motion and a spirit, that impels

all thinking things, all objects of all thought,

and rolls through all things.”

A Dip into Consciousness

picture resource: http://maharishi-programmes.globalgoodnews.com/vedic-astrology/research.html (accessed July 1, 2012)

Modern science has not as of yet declared consciousness as the basis of creation, but reflect on these words by renowned British astrophysicist Sir Arthur Eddington:

“All through physical worlds runs that unknown content which must surely be the stuff of our consciousness. Here is a hint of aspects deep within the world of physics, and yet unattainable by the methods of physics.


And, moreover, we have found that where science has progressed the farthest, the mind has regained from nature that which the mind put into nature. We have found a strange footprint on the shores of the unknown. We have devised profound theories, one after another, to account for its origin. At last we have succeeded in reconstructing that creature that made the footprints. And lo! It is our own.”


– Sir Arthur Stanley Eddington