Chapter 8: The Transcendental Vision
The Ultimate Mystery of Consciousness
All the predicates added on to the “I” sense in the form of both experiences (high and low) and thought-conceptions (great and small) are in fact forms of relation-avoidance, self-contraction, or “I”-modification. When that entire process is understood and transcended, “I” is Realized not as an inward, independent, separate, or separated subject or center of experience and thought but as the Unconditionally Radiant Transcendental Being in or of which even the entire Realm of Nature (internal, or conventionally “subjective,” and external, or conventionally “objective”) is arising as a spontaneous modification that is eternally unnecessary and without binding power.
The Way of that Realization is not at all a matter of conventional inwardness nor of outward self-exploitation. It is a matter of Ecstasy, self-transcendence, or transcendence of the conventions of thought and phenomenal experience. And Ecstasy is associated with processes of intuitive understanding, or self-criticism in response to the argument of Truth, as well as heartfelt whole bodily (or total psycho-physical) surrender into the Radiant Transcendental Presence and Being Who is the Divine Master and Condition of all beings and worlds.
The Way of Ecstasy is expressed as Liberation from the subjective or psychological dilemma of physical and psychic self-limitation, and, on the basis of that Liberation, the apparent individual, and mankind, and all beings, and the total universe or world of light, will be Transfigured, forever Transformed, and ultimately Translated in and into the Radiant Domain of the Infinite Free Blissful Love-Great Divine.
Therefore, the “I” sense (or simple Consciousness) is not only or merely the conventional basis of our experiential existence. It is the basis of our Destiny altogether. We may submit to the conditions of experience (all mental, emotional, and physical predications of the basic “I” sense), and so become endlessly distracted by the positive and negative extremes of experiential and conceptual possibility, or we may Realize the Condition indicated by the simple “I” sense (prior to all the limitations of the “I” sense that are determined by predication, or conventional association with psycho-physical conditions), and thus transcend the dilemma of self-limitation.
Ecstasy is the Realization of the Truth or Transcendental Condition of the “I” sense (or simple, mere Consciousness) through transcendence of “I” as the ego, the conventionally presumed subject of experience. It is to Realize the “I” sense (or simple Consciousness, prior to the thought “I”) as Unconditional or Transcendental Being, the Condition of which all experience is only a nonbinding (or egoless) modification.
The thought “I” is the ego, the conceived subject of experience. But the simple Consciousness is prior to experience, prior to the independent ego-self, prior to body and mind, such that body and mind (or all psycho-physical conditions) are only spontaneous modifications or permutations of that very Consciousness, which is Itself never limited or bound by any experiential or conceptual phenomenon-except that It may presume Itself to be limited, separate or independent, and depressed to the degree that It identifies Itself merely as the bodily and inner “I,” the subject of experience, the “entity” upon which all concepts and experiences are conventionally predicated.
Therefore, we must Awaken from the conventions of our independent subjective mode of “being” and enter into the Transcendental Realization of our own Consciousness (Which is Itself not merely the conventional “I” of mental and physical self-conception, but even the very Life or Light or Spirit in which the mind and the body and the phenomenal world are presently arising). In that case we will be literally Enlightened, or Transfigured, body and mind, by that same Life-Light or Blissfully Radiant Spirit-Being, and we will be physically, morally, and psychically Transformed, even to the ultimate degree of perfect Translation of the apparent self and the apparent world into the Radiant Domain or Infinite Divine Being that is the Mystery of our Consciousness.