One way of understanding Atmananda’s Direct Path–and it is not the only way–is to move in three steps.

In Step 1, one takes one’s stand as witnessing awareness. This means that it’s clear that every single experience–perceiving, sensing, and thinking–appears to me, witnessing awareness, and only to me.

For a while, it seems as if I get lost in the content of objective experience and so for a while it also seems as if I need to “pull myself out” of this sense of lostness “to recover” my state as the witness. Yet, little by little, it becomes totally clear that I never leave witnessing awareness and thus that I’m established as the witness.

Step 2 involves turning back toward objective experience in order to understand whether there is indeed a duality between witnessing awareness and objective experiences. At this point, I investigate whether experiences arise within awareness or whether they arise outside of awareness.

I may need to explore this matter from various angles before it becomes clear that all experiences arise within awareness. For instance, could I ever be aware of a sight if that sight were to arise outside of awareness? Could it somehow begin outside of awareness before passing into “the orbit” or “ken” of awareness? I probe, I check, and I understand.

Once it’s clear that experiences only ever arise in awareness, I need to go one step further. In Step 3, I inquire into what each experience is made of (what is technically termed the “material cause”). What is the substance out of which seeing or hearing or thinking is made? For a while, it may seem as if seeing is made out of matter or light or energy, but do I ever find matter, light, or energy in my direct experience? No, instead I understand that these are nothing but mental posits. In the Direct Path, we refuse all hypotheses–that is, thoughts–and stick with our actual experience.

Is seeing somehow made out of seeing stuff? Well, if awareness is aware of the act of seeing (Step 1) and if seeing only ever occurs within awareness (Step 2), then how is it possible for seeing to be made of something separate like seeing stuff? Where does seeing get that stuff from if it can’t come from outside of awareness to gather up this other stuff and then to port it inside of awareness?

Additionally, awareness–check this–can only be aware of whatever is made of awareness. It’s just not possible for awareness to be aware of anything other than itself. If this is true, then seeing–which awareness is aware of–cannot be made of anything other than awareness. Awareness, then, is seeing or is temporarily modulating itself in this act of seeing.

Since every experience appears to awareness, appears within awareness, and is made only of awareness, every experience is only awareness. This is the strict experiential understanding of the looser statement: “Everything is consciousness, or everything is awareness.”