“The Self alone is the spontaneous self-effulgent Awareness.”

—The Essence of the Ribhu Gita, “Verse 29”

1. I am not the body, the senses, or the mind. I am whatever it is that knows, or is aware, of these objects.

2. A searching inquiry will reveal not just that I am aware of these objects but that I am awareness.

3. Now, the question arises: “What is the nature of this ‘I’ in ‘I am awareness’”? After all, to say that “I am awareness” can suggest any number of possibilities as regards the true nature of “I.”

4. It is already clear what I am not: namely, the body, the senses, or the mind. And it is already evident (2 above) that I am awareness. But now comes a stunning question: is it possible that the very nature of the “I” is none other than the Self? That the very one reading these words right now is, of course, “I” but that it’s the only “I,” the “I” is without limitations, the “I” that is the Self?

5. “The open secret,” as Francis Lucille calls it, is that “ordinary consciousness is universal consciousness.” In other words, I, awareness, am the Self. The Self is not something else or other than the one who is reading these words right now. There are not two selves: the self and the Self. There’s not ego dissolution before Self-realization either because there’s no ego in the first place. There’s just the Self.

6. The Self alone, which I always and already am, is spontaneous, self-effulgent Awareness.