Consciousness lies at the foundation of the material Universe. It is the basis of every form in existence, living and inanimate. It is the single animating factor and guiding principle without which the entire Universe would have no existence.
Everything is conscious. From a blade of grass to a cat in a tree to a mound of sand to the human mind. Every one of these entities is an instrument of consciousness. In fact, to say "we are conscious" is not quite as accurate as to say "we are consciousness itself". Because an instrument's potential is only made manifest by the player without whom it is only an inanimate object.
Think of consciousness as being like electricity. While the universe of electronics is vast and varied in attribute and function they are nevertheless united in one single truth - that without electricity they have no means of manifesting their realities. Whether the object is a simple appliance like a toaster which serves no other purpose than to toast 2 pieces of bread or the object is a complex super-computer that is able to calculate and process vast amounts of information intelligently, both are nonetheless rendered identically obsolete in the absence of electricity.
If you have ever had someone close to you die, and if you have ever witnessed their body laying in the casket, there is something rather striking that you will have the opportunity to observe. You may have a sense that somehow the person lying in front of you is not exactly the person you feel has left you. To the mind the image of the person, the hair, the eyes, the expression matches perfectly. Memory reaffirms that this is indeed the very same person. But beneath the grief, if you are able to reflect deeply enough in silence, it may dawn on you that what lies before you is merely an image, a mirage - a vessel that has fulfilled its purpose even if that purpose is obscured from your understanding. What is and has always been of the greatest essence about that person - the light, the animation, the compassion and the pain - in short, their humanity has vanished into thin air. The body and the brain that lie evidently in front of you are the obvious imposters. Never more than at the moment of death is it more obvious as to what the true identity of a person really is.
Consciousness is what animates every being. And this consciousness is universal and impersonal. It in itself has no material reality. It's only contact point in the material world is through form which it lives through for a while until the form has served its purpose and then it retracts, just like electricity animates the instrument until the instrument no longer is able to function. And even though the death of a person is a loss of the particular expression of consciousness, what we love the most about the other is what we love most about ourselves. Consciousness is the single animating energy that is common to us all.
Self-realization is the shift in identification from seeing one's Self as the instrument of consciousness to seeing one's Self as the root of consciousness itself. This "I" or this sense of being is the one constant and continuous aspect of our experience. Everything else changes: our thoughts, our emotions, our minds, our bodies, our relationships, our circumstances, everything is flux. Only this undefinable and unjustifiable sense of "I am" of "I exist" persists regardless and independent of the conditions in which it persists. That deep rooted sense of being prior to thought, prior to recognition, prior even to the perception of it, is not separate from consciousness. It is consciousness itself prior to it becoming anything, prior to consciousness manifesting as a thought or emotion or perception or recognition. In a state of open awareness pure consciousness can be experienced. And yet language necessarily implies a duality/separation where no duality exists. This is the state of pure being. Of pure awareness. And it is the foundation of each and every individual existence.
Each and every person, when allowed to fall quiet in meditation has the opportunity to contact that very same impersonal awareness. This state which has been given many names such as Brahman by the Hindus, no-mind (mu-shin) or Big mind by Zen buddhists, the Holy Spirit by Christianity, Fanaa by the Sufi muslims is none other than that vast impersonal consciousness as yet unmanifested. If a quantum theorist were to use their own jargon to coin a term for it, it would be something like the 'field of quantum potentiality'.
This consciousness is at the heart of existence. It is that sense of "I exist". It is infinite and unreachable by the mind because it is prior to the mind. The mind can only reflect on it through thought which is only the overlay of an image. The mind cannot experience it. And yet the mind functions because of it. It is the very ground of our experience.Whatever consciousness touches comes to life, whatever consciousness retracts from dies. Yet consciousness itself has no limitation nor does it have a beginning or end. It gives a seeming reality to all that it illuminates just like the sun creates mirages in the desert heat.
