The direct path teaching of Sri Atmananda is, in many respects, especially counterintuitive at first. Let me write about just one respect in which this is so in what follows.

Most of us have felt that there’s something that may be hidden yet still existent. We may have thought: “I’ve definitely looked and looked for this thing, and so far I haven’t found it. Yet for all that, it may exist. That’s because it may be hidden from me.”

Ours is a “hermeneutic of depth”: it may be beyond our reach but not beyond existence. Haven’t we felt as if the subconscious mind contains hidden, unexposed depths that are nonetheless “there”? Or haven’t we assumed that there may be something lurking or waiting somewhere “off-stage” but has yet to appear? It’s “dormant,” and we suspect that it may at some point “come into being.”

So, we believe strongly that X exists (or may exist) but that X is unknown, unfound, or cannot be determined.

Is this true? Here’s the fascinating methodological remark made by the direct path teaching:

• Since all you can ever do know or can know is experience, if you can’t find X in direct experience, then X does not exist. QED.

The implications for this understanding are huge. A couple:

• An assiduous investigation does not reveal a doer or an enjoyer, a knower, or–indeed–any other ego-self. In fact, you find no “intermediate layers” between awareness and effervescent arisings (seeing, touching, thinking, etc.).
• Moreover, concerning the nature of awareness, you find no borders, boundaries, or edges. Seeing in your direct experience that awareness is formless, you realize that it’s unlimited. By what could formlessness be limited? If there are no borders or boundaries, how could it be hemmed in or contained?

The direct path, in brief, disabuses you of the “something is veiled from my experiential understanding” view. That doubt–which is just a thought, and a thought is just another arising–goes. The hermeneutic of depth, an emperor who has no clothes, goes.

And you feel–really feel!–that all lies open to view, that all is right here in plain sight (so to speak). This feeling understanding is sweet, clear joy.