Ken: Dear Ramji, here is an update on the previous email sent to you. There are some alterations in the light of more insights!! I look forward to your critique whenever you can. Perhaps we could discuss it during some spare time at the retreat. I know how busy you are.

I am pure awareness. I can see the Ken-person (gross-subtle-causal-bodies system) as an object in my presence. Events and experiences happen in and to the Ken-object according to the laws of the Field/dharma/Isvara. But I am different from this object and illumine it; I am aware of it. The Ken-object exists in my presence.

With the help of maya, I, pure awareness, appear to project myself as the Ken-object. I also permeate through it and reflect off it. By so doing the Ken-object appears animated and functioning, like a puppet appearing to move when the strings are pulled or a dummy appearing to speak when the ventriloquist performs or cartoons in the movies appearing to be alive on the screen. The Ken-object is and continues to be inert, inanimate and insentient but now appears to be alive, functioning and independent. It is really not functioning; instead, functioning happens to and through it.

I am pure awareness, me, plus my “extension,” or off-shoot, the permeating/reflected-awareness. Although there are no parts to me as pure awareness describing myself in this way is only a temporary intellectual manoeuvre for the benefit of an ignorant seeker. It is like describing sun and sunlight. What causes photosynthesis and life and movement on earth? It is sunlight, not the sun as such. If the sun moved any closer the earth would be scorched.

Is sunlight different from the sun? Yes and no. Yes, sunlight is not the sun itself. But sunlight is the sun in another way, its radiation, an effect of the sun. An effect is the cause in a different form, like ring is gold in a different form or pot is clay as a different form. Similarly, my permeating/reflected awareness appears to be different from me, pure awareness, but it is not. It is me in an apparently different aspect. Awareness is non-dual and cannot be divided into parts. But to help a seeker understand, awareness can be temporarily described as permeating/reflected and as pure/total until realisation occurs.

Associated with a form, the permeating/reflected awareness appears to be affected by ignorance. It identifies with the Ken-object and suffers. The object itself does not suffer because it is insentient. Rather, it is the apparently ignorant permeating/reflected-awareness (jiva) which suffers.

How does it suffer? The permeating/reflected awareness, overcome by ignorance, believes it is incomplete, insignificant, weak, lonely, helpless and separate from pure/total awareness. This is just a thought, a misunderstanding, a mistaken idea, an effect of ignorance, an amazing bondage but not the truth. What is needed is knowledge, not action, to overcome ignorance.

Enquiry and self-knowledge remove ignorance, leaving awareness as it is, pristine and directly self-aware. Thus permeating/reflected awareness realises it is already and always complete, full, whole, peace itself, lovingness as such, happiness per se, limitless, eternal, changeless, actionless, non-dual, commonplace awareness. This is liberation for the permeating/reflected awareness (jiva).

Whereas I, pure awareness, am never affected by anything. I am neither complete nor incomplete, neither full nor not-full, neither whole nor not-whole, neither peace nor not-peace, neither lovingness nor not-lovingness, neither happiness nor not-happiness, neither bliss nor not-bliss, neither limitless nor not-limitless, neither changing nor not-changing, neither eternal nor not-eternal, neither actionless nor not-actionless, neither non-dual nor not-non-dual, neither commonplace nor not-commonplace, neither matrix nor projection… “neither nor” anything.

Any or all phrases do not apply to me, pure awareness. I am all there is, the only reality. Everything else, every description, is an apparent projection onto me. They are pointers, indicators, appearances, existing but not real, not enduring, however subtle and transcendental. The permeating/reflected awareness is apparently ignorant and so apparently gets liberated. But I, pure awareness, am neither ignorant, bound nor liberated. I am always aware, simply aware, with or without the Ken-object.

When the Ken-object disintegrates, I alone am. But it was “fun” playing and experiencing the Ken-object!! From my point of view as pure awareness it could be said that all objects are as good as “not really there,” not really existing, just mere insubstantial phantoms, like that snake projected onto the rope.

I, pure awareness, cannot be described. What may be said about me is that “I am” and “I know” “am-ness,” or “being-ness,” and “knowing-ness,” nothing else. I am self-existent and do not depend on anything for my being. I know myself directly without the intermediary of any structure, such as a mind.

This realisation, which underpins and clarifies the understanding of the Ken-object, also applies to the whole of creation, maya, the dharma field, or Isvara. Creation, from the vast to the minuscule, is also an object in me. Everything is an object in me, arising and passing away in my presence. I alone am.