Self-Realization and Other Awakenings

By illusory, I meant that the experience was that ‘I’
had a sense of permanence. Consciousness came and
went through time, but I was separate and not
affected by the passage of the states or the objects
within consciousness, or the totality of manifest
consciousness itself. The experience was, I am
permanent, all else is fluid, temporary, insubstantial,
and thus not real. I was that state that supported all
the illusion.
That is, I acquired the knowledge that I existed
beyond the universe of manifestation. I had never
been born into that universe as a human entity. I was
not really a human being. I was something else
entirely, what Nisargadatta called the witness, or the
Absolute, or Para-Brahman.
I was the unborn, as we all are. Yet ‘I’ was
constantly associated with this body/mind entity
named, Edward that was perfectly able to function all
by itself without thinking, self-reference, or a
separate sense of self in the world.
So what is functioning in the world if I am beyond
that? This was my discovery: consciousness was
functioning all by itself as an apparent body/mind.
Everything that existed in the manifest world was
consciousness, from the body, to the functioning of the
body, to all the objects in the world. All was
consciousness operating in an impersonal way in the