Can we see the inner seat of consciousness beyond the raw sensation of awareness?
So how do we see the seat of consciousness because when we try to see inward we just are aware of the raw sensation of our experiences not the seat of consciousness I'll extend that metaphor of a light source so if say we had a white bulb but it has a red glass around it then although the light coming from the bulb is white because of the glass being red the light coming out will be red so similarly we could say consciousness coming from its seat is virtuous but each of us has covering around it and this covering is also constantly being reformed by our actions not reformed in the sense of being changed for the positive re and form it is constantly being modified modified for the good or modified for the bad whatever based on how we are acting and so the we what we can perceive is consciousness as it is manifest through the mind and through the body so consciousness as the person consciousness as it is perceived in an outer medium is what we can see but consciousness itself or the seat of consciousness as we said that is not possible for us to see because what we are looking for is what we are looking with what we are looking for is what we are looking with and that's why the seer can't see oneself but that doesn't have to be always the case yeah I'll explain that so it is said self-realization is the journey of consciousness through consciousness to consciousness what does that mean? it's a journey of consciousness say like right now we are discussing the subject so our consciousness is going in various directions maybe for some of you it's thinking when is the food going to come? I am hungry now the consciousness is going towards food some of you will be thinking this is all becoming very abstract I'm just going to tune off now or some of you may be very interested basically our consciousness is always in a journey so maybe I could please bring this a little push this a little closer do we have something to wipe this? yeah thank you everybody can see it from there yeah sure just keep everything as it is just the individualism, individuality can drive it off so when I said this is moving outward so this is also consciousness so normally our consciousness moves in various directions so it is the consciousness always on a journey now this is also consciousness because this is the seat of consciousness and consciousness is the journey of consciousness through consciousness to consciousness what does it mean is this consciousness is going outward it comes back inward like this now how does that happen? that happens when as you said the mind itself becomes like a mirror so when the mind becomes like a mirror the consciousness moves outwards and then from here it moves inwards and that is when we can perceive ourselves so that is called self-realization and that requires the complete cleansing of the mind now in the mind at that time doesn't function only as a mirror if you see in this picture the mind has meant to function also as a window that we can see the outer world but at presently the mind functions as a window or sometimes it also functions like a tv screen that is when we become absent-minded we see everything except what is in front of us but right now very little of the mind functions as a mirror but as we become as it becomes cleansed of contaminations then we can perceive ourselves better so we can't buy this mirror we have to purify ourselves and self-understanding increases as we progress towards self-realization so it is an incremental journey just like a small newborn baby it is not aware of anything except maybe food now newborn babies experience the world as potential food whatever they get they put it in their mouth and that's how they primarily experience things but gradually they start having a sense of differentiated reality oh this person who holds me so gently who offers me and this is my mother and then gradually they start getting a sense of selfhood that okay this is you know if I hit this oh I felt hurt what happened oh my hand went over the interval so they start their consciousness starts demarcating their own body so that is at a physical level but at a mental level also we can start understanding ourselves better when we go through different situations in life you know this this I can do very well now this skill I saw the other people they collapse under this situation they can't take the stress but I can maybe I'm good at this but then some other things we start doing it and everybody seems to be enjoying and we feel when will this end now say suppose we are introverts and then we are with a group of extroverts and everybody is talking loudly and enjoying say if you go to a party for an extrovert they come with a smile and the more people they meet their smile becomes bigger and bigger and bigger but for an introvert they come with a smile and the more people they meet the smiles are becoming smaller and smaller till it becomes and they're screaming for oxygen I have to leave now so by just by going through various experiences we learn about ourselves more so that is we can learn about ourselves at the level of the mind but to learn about ourselves at the level of the soul we need to consciously expose ourselves to spiritual experiences so mantra chanting is one way in which we guide our consciousness to go to the spiritual level so the sound of the mantras are spiritual sounds and as we let our consciousness flow along those sounds what happens is our consciousness becomes increasingly spiritualized that is the time when we become completely spiritualized that is when we will be able to perceive ourselves does it answer your question? why can't consciousness perceive itself? yeah it can but as long as we are in an embodied state we are right now the consciousness and the body are different but we are connected together so it's to give another example suppose somebody is watching a movie and they are in a theater and now normally in a movie two things happen when you enter into the theater the lights go off and the lights go on the lights go off so that we are no longer so much distracted by things around us the people around us the happenings around us the lights go on so that our consciousness gets fixated we could say on the screen and what is happening on the screen now similarly you take this to a further degree when the soul the soul is the seat of consciousness when the soul comes in contact with the body basically the lights go off that means the soul can't perceive itself the consciousness gets fixated on the mind and the body so as long as we are fixated on the screen it's only when the screen becomes a mirror we will see ourselves of course once the fixation with the movie screen goes off then we can turn around and see ourselves it's possible but generally as long as the soul is in embodied state it stays fixated with the body and the mind and that's why we need the mind to perceive the self.