Devi: If self is unborn, then how is consciousness born from it? Kindly respond.
Sundari: The Self is Consciousness. It is unborn and undying, adjata.
What is Consciousness?
1. I Am whole and complete, non-dual, actionless, unlimited, unchanging, ever-present, ordinary Consciousness. THE SELF.
2. I Am the source of all happiness and joy. I need nothing to complete me nor any experience to make me happy.
3. I Am the independent Consciousness that enlivens the body. By my light shining on the mind and senses, it thinks, feels, and knows.
4. I Am not a part, product or property of the body/mind. The body/mind is an object known to me.
5. I Am the subject for all objects. An object is anything other than me. All objects are therefore known to me but do not know me.
6. I Am the Existence, Nature and Essence of all objects.
7. I Am non-separate from all objects who depend on me to exist, but I depend on nothing. I never enter the world though it reflects me, just as the reflection in a mirror is the same but not the same as the one who casts it.
8. I Am not limited by the boundaries of the body. There is nowhere I am not.
9. I Am not affected by the death of body. I am unborn and undying, adjata.
10. I Am the invisible, all-pervasive space like Consciousness in which all bodies appear, including the one I refer to as ‘mine’.
11. I Am not limited by or ‘in’ time. Time is an object known to me.
12. I Am self-evident and need nothing to prove my existence. It is obvious all living beings are conscious, though it is not obvious to most that their nature is me, unlimited Consciousness.
13. I Am always experiencing Consciousness and am never not Consciousness, even when the body dies.
14. I Am never in contact with thoughts/experience and am always free of and unaffected by both, though without me, no thought or experience is possible. I illumine and pervade every thought and exist between thoughts. I do not come and go when thoughts come and go. I am the knower of the coming and going of thoughts. When the mind is identified with thoughts it is confused and deluded by Maya, duality.
15. I am Satya, that which is always present and unchanging. Experience is mithya, that which is not always present and is always changing. All experience takes place in the apparent reality, the world of objects created by Maya. Thoughts/experience are subtle objects. No experience happens without me, but I Am never experiencing anything. I am the non-experiencing witness of the experiencing entity, the jiva. No experience takes place ‘in’ me because there is nothing but me – so there is no ‘space’ to accommodate objects.
16. All objects appear in me, change, and die. But I am the only constant unchanging factor. Without me, no object can exist, but I need nothing because I am EXISTENCE itself.
Om and prem
Sundari
