Self-Realization and Other Awakenings

But why would anyone want to call something
unknown and unknowable as their real self? This
Absolute, this unmanifest is entirely beyond knowing
and experience, including the Void, so why label it and
infer qualities and characteristics to it? It is merely
the mind trying to grasp something entirely beyond its
ken. Leave this philosophizing alone. It does not help
in any way to talk about the relationship between the
Absolute and phenomenality.
And remember, the Void, the spaciousness, is part
of consciousness and is not beyond it.
The only "reality" is what is presented in
experience, including the world, your body, your
senses, emotions, thoughts, etc. Even though it flows
and changes continuously, it is the only thing we will
ever know. We cannot know the Absolute.
Some say look at your experience and find out that
which does not change, for that is your real nature. Of
course that is the Void, the emptiness that pervades
all inner and outer experience. Yet, it is still an aspect
of experience, and is not beyond experience. Even
this silence is not beyond experience.
Yet, you also are the Absolute. You begin to know
this by intuition, then by a kind of inferential
knowledge I call apprehension, and then it becomes a