Atmananda’s teaching often takes two different lines. One line follows the process of separation while the other invites us to reduce everything to Consciousness.

1. The Process of Separation

The process of separation involves splitting subjectivity off from accidental yet habitual identification of the subject with some object or other. Here’s a typical example:

An experience is composed of two parts:

1. the background, which is the Reality itself; and

2. the expression, which is only a superimposition of the mind and senses upon the background Reality.
In examining any experience to see what it is, we must give up the expression part of it as belonging entirely to the mind and senses [i.e., as belonging to the objective side], and take only the background which alone is permanent and real [that is, the subject alone].

Atmananda, “42,” Notes on the Spiritual Discourses of Shri Atmananda: Volume 1.

Whenever we investigate something or other, we are to separate Ourself from that which is under investigation to reveal the nature of Ourself. Through this means, we realize that we’re not the senses, the body, or the mind.

The process of separation discloses two things. In the first place, it reveals the witness state. As this line of inquiry is followed through again and again, one comes to take one’s stand as the witness. In the second place, it invites one to go deeper into one’s “real Center” (as Atmananda sometimes calls Consciousness) in order to discover that the I is Pure Consciousness. In this way, the witness stand (which is only, so to speak, a midway point between Pure Consciousness and objectivity) dissolves in the Ocean of Consciousness.

2. Reduction to Consciousness

A second line would have us examine any experience until it’s clear that it’s nothing other than Consciousness. I offer but one of countless examples:

It may seem as if there are independently existing objects (the world). Upon close examination, however, one understands that all objects cannot appear unless they are objects of the senses. But once we carefully examine this object of the senses, we next discover that it’s nothing but sense activity–or sensing. An even closer examination of sensing reveals that it’s nothing apart from form–that is, thought. An examination of thought discloses the Truth: the substance of thought is nothing but Consciousness. This is to say that thought is the shining forth of Consciousness as a temporary appearance.

Further inquiries show that any sense object is, in essence, Consciousness as are the body, the mind, energy, and any subtle objects too.