One way of interpreting a particular line of inquiry in Atmananda’s teaching is to say that he is showing you that the penultimate step in the reduction to Consciousness is the finite mind.

Let’s suppose that we take over Rupert Spira’s schematization from his book The Transparency of Things: perception (the world) can be reduced to perceiving; sensation (the body) to sensing; and thought, or thought and feeling, to thinking (the mind in what Spira terms “the narrow sense”).

Then it can be asked: “What can perceiving, sensing, and thinking be reduced to just before they are reduced to Consciousness? What, necessarily, is that of which they’re made?”

They can be reduced to the finite mind. Let the finite mind be understood as none other than “subtle thought” or “subtle thinking.” Then it could be said that experiencing is, at this penultimate level, nothing but the spatialized and/or temporalized movement of subtle thought. Subtle thought–be it in the mode of perceiving, sensing, or thinking–is gently vibrating.

This means that subtle thought is “responsible for” the sense of localization and limitation. Therefore, when the movement of subtle thought is seen as nothing but Consciousness, the sense of localization and limitation also falls away with it.

When one is established in Consciousness and thus when it’s clear that one has never entered into or departed from Consciousness, then is one established in What One Is.