## Highlights - As we will directly explore later, that Wholeness is not mythic, supernatural, or magical; rather the experience of Wholeness is that, as you are looking at the world around you, suddenly you and that world become one single experience of Unity consciousness. You feel that you are indeed one with the entire world; you are one with everything, and the entire universe is arising within you. That’s typically the direct experience of Unity consciousness—and then, after that experience, you will usually come up with all sorts of explanations for it, most of which won’t stand up to any sort of critical scrutiny and would rationally be shot down, but that won’t stop you from trying. And ([Location 239](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0CLR9BB9V&location=239)) - I note that I will claim that almost all of the magical and mythic stories in the Bible were written when humanity was at those earlier stages—the magic and mythic stages—some two thousand to six thousand years ago. Thus, at the time they were written, they were not mistakes or hallucinations or delusions, but they were written by humans at the earlier magic and mythic stages of development—and they honestly and sincerely meant what they wrote. At that point, I will soften my harsh criticism of those religious views—it’s like yelling at a five-year-old—but without changing the essential point that they are indeed products of earlier, lower, and largely outmoded and outdated (and hence indeed “unbelievable”) stages of human evolution and that none of these beliefs are required for a direct experience of real Wholeness. But, if you have any of those beliefs, you don’t have to get rid of them—although you might choose to do so, or at least find ways to update them. ([Location 256](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0CLR9BB9V&location=256)) - Wholeness is not something that everybody automatically sees, like a rock or a tree. You actually have to know where to look for Wholeness, and then you have to go out and look for it. Otherwise, as strange as it might seem, you won’t find Wholeness; you will remain partial, fragmented, and broken—or at least not nearly as Whole as you could be. ([Location 265](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0CLR9BB9V&location=265)) - fact, if there were one point alone that I would like you to take from this book, it would be “You have to know where to look for Wholeness.” ([Location 269](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0CLR9BB9V&location=269)) - Waking Up is a baseline position for those who want a deep, extensive, and even absolute experience of Wholeness (we’ll see what absolute means in just a moment), and it has probably had a more profound impact on human history than any other experience that has ever occurred. While ordinary people “lead lives of quiet desperation” (and pain and suffering), Waking Up has been the fallback position for anyone, whether in the East or the West, who wanted a more authentic, vital, enlightened, and “awakened” life, one that did indeed have an “absolute” or “ultimate” meaning, because it was plugged directly into the ultimate Ground of All Being (and that is not a myth but an immediate and direct experience). ([Location 396](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0CLR9BB9V&location=396)) - Generally speaking, the path of Waking Up had a single major goal. It started with the average state of consciousness of a typical human being, which was said to be narrow, limited, fragmented, and marked by inherent suffering, anxiety, and torment—a state that generally was said to involve what is called the “separate-self sense,” “self-contraction,” the “illusory self,” the “fallen self,” the “dreaming self,” or simply the “ego” (none of them complimentary terms). The goal of Waking Up was, through the direct experimental practices of meditation, contemplation, or yoga, to transform consciousness from that limited and contracted state through several much more inclusive, open, and free states, to a genuine Wholeness, a pure Nonduality, an ultimate Unity consciousness or Kosmic consciousness,[1] an absolute Oneness with the entire universe. This Wholeness wasn’t just a religious belief or theological dogma or something to be taken on mere faith but a direct and immediate personal experience, a datum or real evidence given to anybody who successfully carried out the interior experiment of meditation or contemplation. (Since meditation is primarily a practice of direct awareness and not a mythic belief system, I will take meditation as an example of something that is “spiritual but not religious”—and it is definitely interested in experience not explanation, which most meditation systems take to be part of the problem, not the solution.) ([Location 416](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0CLR9BB9V&location=416)) - the path of Waking Up is the only major discipline anywhere in the world’s history that has claimed it was dealing with an ultimate Truth. There were lots of relative truths all over the place, and the Paths of Liberation (the Wisdom Traditions that directly and explicitly dealt with Waking Up) denied none of these relative truths. The truths of things that would later be established by science—the truths of physics, chemistry, biology, astronomy, and so on—were all respected and accepted. But those were all relative truths (and their believers never claimed that these truths were anything but that); they dealt with reality in the relative realm of space and time, a reality that changes and evolves over time. But Waking Up, the claim went, deals not with relative truth but with ultimate Truth. Ultimate Truth does not deal with a particular being or group of beings; it deals with Being itself, with a capital B—the Ground of All Being, spaceless and therefore infinite, timeless and therefore eternal, and a groundless Ground that underlies every relative truth in existence but is not itself a relative truth (and thus is not detectable by ordinary, external science but only by an interior, meditative science). This radical Waking Up experience was universally and unanimously claimed to be disclosing a genuinely ultimate Truth not a relative truth. ([Location 441](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0CLR9BB9V&location=441)) - Peterson does is tell the bloody truth: “There is an overwhelming amount of evidence that those two kinds of consciousness exist, one being your consciousness, of you as a localized and specified being [your individual ego], and the other being this capacity to experience oceanic dissolution and the sense of the cosmos being one [or ultimate Wholeness].”[2] Peterson also says, “The fact that those different states of consciousnesses exist is not disputable.” And he also says, “So the case that the transcendent experience is not real, is wrong.” He adds, almost under his breath, “It actually challenges, to some degree, our concepts of what constitutes real.”[3] ([Location 475](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0CLR9BB9V&location=475)) - There are 5 basic stages of a meditation path, according to a meta-analysis of the Traditions. The first stage, where most people start, is that of gross thinking and the ego, the so-called monkey mind, or incessant, internal, mental chattering. Many traditions just call this “the waking state,” which means the ordinary, conventional, or “illusory” state of waking awareness (which Integral calls the “gross state”). Almost all of the major meditative traditions maintain that this egoic state is the direct cause of the pain and suffering inherent in the human condition (certainly in its fallen, ignorant, or unenlightened state). One of the first things they want to do is help human beings move beyond this narrow, nasty, vicious monkey mind (Hobbes’s classic definition of the natural condition of humanity perfectly describes this state: “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short”). ([Location 504](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0CLR9BB9V&location=504)) - The transcendence of this pitiless state starts to happen with stage 2, which Brown calls “Awareness,” because this state starts to move beyond gross thinking to a thought-free Awareness, where the ego is dropped and there is instead what Brown calls a very “subtle personality.” Integral calls this stage the “subtle state,” which is marked by the luminosity of the subtle personality, which Integral identifies as being not the ego but the soul. The self-sense is beginning to expand from the cramped, narrow, skin-encapsulated ego on its way to the Supreme Identity of the ultimate state, which Suzuki Roshi calls “Big Mind.” ([Location 510](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0CLR9BB9V&location=510)) - Brown calls stage 3 “Awareness Itself,” because this is a pure Awareness that sheds all gross and subtle phenomena and is plugged into the core, background, spacetime matrix of the entire universe. Integral calls this the “archetypal” and “causal state.” The causal state is often intuited in the pure formless Silence between thoughts. The Traditions also maintain that everybody experiences the causal state each night in deep dreamless sleep, a totally formless state where we… ([Location 515](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0CLR9BB9V&location=515)) - Brown calls stage 4 “Boundless Changeless Awareness”—and just by its name you can tell that this is truly a significant step. This stage is a pure Consciousness without an object, which Integral, following Advaita Vedanta, also calls turiya, which is a Sanskrit term that literally means “the fourth.” It is named that because it is the fourth major state of consciousness after the first three of gross, subtle, and causal. Stage 4 is a pure, timeless Witness, the sense of pure I Amness, an ever-present Awareness and not any content of Awareness. Later on, we will see what this ever-present state really means and why it embodies the actual meaning of “eternity.” “Eternity” does not mean a really, really long time; it means a point without time, a timeless Now, and this is not something hard to attain but impossible to avoid. This… ([Location 520](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0CLR9BB9V&location=520)) - Brown calls stage 5, the highest state, “Nondual Awakened Awareness,” which Integral, following Advaita Vedanta, calls turiyatita, which literally means “beyond turiya.” It’s pure nondual Suchness or Thusness, ultimate Unity consciousness, or One Taste—an ultimate Oneness or Nonduality. The direct realization of this radical state is known as Enlightenment, Awakening, Metamorphosis, Fana, Moksha, Satori, the Great Liberation, the Supreme Identity. This state really does make me one with everything—a pure Unity or nondual Oneness, where nondual means “not-two.”… ([Location 527](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0CLR9BB9V&location=527)) - These major states of consciousness become the major stages of meditation, because a person’s central identity starts out confined to the typical ego-dominated waking state, and with increasing meditation, it ends up traversing all of those state-stages in consciousness, resulting in a pure Awakening of ultimate Unity consciousness. I refer to this sequence of state-stages, in whole or part, as Waking Up. ([Location 552](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0CLR9BB9V&location=552)) - Eternity does not mean everlasting time; it means a point without time, timelessness. Because eternity means “timelessness”—a point without time—then all of eternity can fully and completely fit into every moment of time. ([Location 567](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0CLR9BB9V&location=567)) - “If we take eternity to mean, not everlasting temporal duration, but a point without time, then eternal life belongs to those who live in the present.”[5] ([Location 582](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0CLR9BB9V&location=582)) - The Prajnaparamita Sutras—the core of virtually all of Mahayana Buddhism—make one point over and over again: “If you could just realize that the Enlightened Mind is not attainable, you would be Enlightened.” The Enlightened Mind is not attainable because you already have it, all of it. You can no more attain Enlightenment than you can attain your kidneys or acquire your feet. And that’s the simple paradox: you are always already enlightened, but you still have to recognize that fact. ([Location 597](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0CLR9BB9V&location=597)) - This Now-moment doesn’t move through time; time moves through it. ([Location 619](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0CLR9BB9V&location=619)) - Again, intuiting that the deepest part of you will never die (or is Undying) does not mean that you will live in time forever; it means that your True Self plugs straight into an eternal and infinite Ground of Being, a Ground so deep—and so timeless and eternal—that its core is totally untouched by the stream of time. When people even vaguely intuit that Ground, or their True Self, they are actually intuiting the Unborn and Undying. And in their deepest awareness, they know that they are that, and they cannot truthfully imagine otherwise. ([Location 635](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0CLR9BB9V&location=635)) - Your True Self exists prior to your parents’ birth, prior to the birth of this earth, prior to the birth of this solar system, prior to the birth of this galaxy because it exists prior to the stream of time, period. ([Location 652](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0CLR9BB9V&location=652)) - This means that you are not living in the narrow, passing present, which is brutally squished in between a huge past and a seemingly endless future. You are not crammed and wedged into a temporal sequence running from the past to the passing present to the future. Rather, you are living in the limitless Spaciousness of an all-embracing timeless Now, through which all past, present, and future events arise within the vast openness of this boundless, borderless Presence. ([Location 653](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0CLR9BB9V&location=653)) - infinity does not mean “a really, really big space,” it means “a point without space.” It doesn’t mean “a whole bunch of space,” it means “spaceless.” And just as eternity, being timeless, means that all of eternity is fully present at every point of time, so infinity, being spaceless, means that all of infinity is fully present at every point of space. ([Location 674](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0CLR9BB9V&location=674)) - After all, these structures of Growing Up are so hard to see and understand that they were not discovered until around one hundred years ago. Why was that? The structures of consciousness in Growing Up are very much like the rules of grammar. Everybody brought up in a particular culture ends up speaking that culture’s language quite accurately. They put subjects and verbs together correctly, they use adjectives and adverbs correctly, and in general they follow the rules of grammar of that language quite accurately. But if you ask someone to write down all of those rules of grammar, virtually nobody can do it. You and I right now can follow the rules of English grammar, but I doubt we can write them down. We can’t do this because we cannot see these structures simply by looking within. The same is true for the structure-stages of Growing Up. ([Location 830](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0CLR9BB9V&location=830)) - The child cannot tell where its body stops and the chair begins. It’s in a state that is often called an adual “undifferentiated fusion state”—where adual means that there is no difference or duality between the self and the other. Now this is definitely not a nondual spiritual oneness with everything, which will be subsequently lost to produce an “alienated ego,” and then regained in awareness to achieve an “ultimate unity consciousness,” as many retro-Romantic thinkers would have you believe. ([Location 850](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0CLR9BB9V&location=850)) - I like to describe the two-colored ball experiment. Take a ball colored red on one side and green on the other. Place it directly between you and a young child who is still at the early egocentric structure-stage, two to three years old. Turn the ball several times so the child can see it’s colored differently on each side. Then place the red side toward the child and the green side toward yourself. Ask the child, “What color are you seeing?” The child will correctly say, “Red.” Then ask the child, “What color am I seeing?” And the child will say, “Red.” In other words, at this early stage 1, the child has no idea that you are seeing the world from a different perspective than it does. ([Location 865](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0CLR9BB9V&location=865)) - But when the child reaches ethnocentric stage 2 (starting around four to five years, and often lasting long into life), all that changes. If you now ask the child, “What color am I seeing?” it will correctly say, “Green.” The child’s viewpoint has expanded from its own limited egocentric stance, where it saw only its own view, to an ethnocentric stance, where it can actually take the role of other. It switches from an ego-centered self-sense to an essentially group-centered self-sense (or a 2nd-person-aware self-sense). ([Location 873](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0CLR9BB9V&location=873)) - It’s also described as absolutistic not because it discloses some sort of ultimate Reality but because it treats its own views as if they were absolute, unchallengeable, and infallibly true. ([Location 883](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0CLR9BB9V&location=883)) - The emergence of care for an entire group is why Gilligan calls this stage the “care” stage. Here, at least, real care can emerge and be developed for other people, and this is a stunningly important development. But it is indeed very much an “us-versus-them” mentality, caring for those in one’s own special group but deeply suspicious of all outsiders (or unbelievers, apostates, heretics, or, in general, the “Other”). Still, at this care stage, the care extended to the in-group is very genuine (Nazis truly loved their families and their country). ([Location 892](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0CLR9BB9V&location=892)) - That next structure-stage, the worldcentric stage 3—which moves from ethnocentric (care for a privileged group) to worldcentric (care for all groups)—is a major, staggeringly important development. This stage extends moral care not just to a chosen group but to all groups, to all humans, without exception. ([Location 904](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0CLR9BB9V&location=904)) - The highest structure-stage in this simplified, 4-stage model of Growing Up is generally referred to as “integrated,” “systemic,” or “integral,” since it integrates the perspectives of all of the previous stages. ([Location 927](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0CLR9BB9V&location=927)) - Very roughly, around 20 to 30 percent will be at egocentric, 60 to 70 percent will be at ethnocentric, 10 to 20 will be at worldcentric, and 5 to 10 percent at integral. ([Location 937](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0CLR9BB9V&location=937)) - We just saw that the worldcentric structure-stages of development emerged only around two to three hundred years ago. And the highest of those stages, Integral, with 5–10 percent of the population, is starting to emerge only in the first quarter of the twenty-first century. For around ten thousand years before that, human civilization’s cultural center of gravity was mostly at one or another of the ethnocentric-mythic stages of development, and before that, going back perhaps fifty thousand years, mostly at one or another of the egocentric-magic stages. ([Location 971](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0CLR9BB9V&location=971)) - these 6-to-8 Growing Up structure-stages was given by the developmental genius Jean Gebser. As we saw, he called these stages “archaic,” “magic,” “mythic,” “rational,” “pluralistic,” and “integral.” Those stages correspond with our simplified, 4-stage model as follows: archaic and magic = egocentric; mythic = ethnocentric; rational and pluralistic = worldcentric; integral = integrated. ([Location 977](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0CLR9BB9V&location=977)) - fundamentalist means “ethnocentric,” no matter what belief, religion, or philosophy), ([Location 1083](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0CLR9BB9V&location=1083)) - Finally, if individuals at this Integral Growing Up structure have a real Waking Up experience, they will—finally!—give this ultimate nondual Unity experience the full, whole, and deeply integrated interpretation that such an experience calls for. In offering the greatest embrace in the realm of relative reality, it offers the fullest amount of nonduality uniting the relative realm with the ultimate. ([Location 1152](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0CLR9BB9V&location=1152)) - We saw that spiritual intelligence is one of around a dozen or so intelligences—or lines of development—that all human beings possess. These lines include cognitive intelligence, emotional intelligence, moral intelligence, aesthetic intelligence, spiritual intelligence, and so on. The crucial evolutionary point is that each of these intelligences addresses a fundamental question that life throws at us, and over the hundreds of thousands of years that humanity has evolved, these intelligences evolved to address these central questions and issues. For example, moral intelligence addresses the question “What is the right thing to do?” Emotional intelligence addresses the question “What do I feel about that?” Cognitive intelligence addresses “What exactly am I aware of right now?” Aesthetic intelligence addresses the question “What looks the most attractive or most beautiful to me?” And spiritual intelligence? Spiritual intelligence addresses the central question “What is it that is of ultimate concern (or ultimate reality) for me?” ([Location 1209](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0CLR9BB9V&location=1209)) - A more recent, postmodern, worldcentric form of narrative spirituality might go like this: “If we look at all of the recent breakthroughs in modern natural science, we see the emergence of a new paradigm. This new paradigm tells us that all the things and events in the universe are totally interwoven with all the other things and events, so that the entire universe is a single, great, interwoven Web of Life. The more I see myself as being merely one of the strands in this great Web, the more I see clearly what my true place in the world is. Quantum mechanics shows us that everything in the universe is deeply entangled with everything else, and the more we realize this—the more that we realize that each of us is simply one part of the Whole—the more we will live in accord with Nature and stop the utterly suicidal resource depletion and global warming that we are now causing, which will soon destroy the biosphere and all human life with it.” For this sort of person, their ultimate concern is Gaia and its ecological balance, and so that’s what their spiritual or ultimate-concern narrative is focused on. ([Location 1323](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0CLR9BB9V&location=1323)) - Let me briefly expand on the notion that Growing Up interprets or explains Waking Up. Now it’s true that some profound Waking Up experiences are themselves without words, labels, concepts, or ideas—they are very close to a pure experience or pure wordless awareness. But as soon as the person comes out of that nonconceptual state—and at some point they will—they begin to think about the experience, interpret it, ask what it means, why it occurred; they might even place it in a very elaborate philosophy or metaphysics. In other words, they are using their mind and its words and concepts; that is, they are using some sort of intelligence—in this case, spiritual intelligence (probably combined with cognitive intelligence, but they can also use any other intelligence they want to help explain this—emotional intelligence, moral intelligence, aesthetic intelligence, and so on). In these cases, they will engage whatever level of development that particular line of development is at, which means that their interpretations and explanations will spring from that Growing Up stage, whatever it might be. This really is unavoidable. And this is why Waking Up is always interpreted by Growing Up, itself coming from a particular level of development (in whatever line). ([Location 1364](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0CLR9BB9V&location=1364)) - The green stage is egalitarian, because it wants to see everything and everybody as completely equal. Thus a person at that stage of Growing Up will often interpret their Waking Up in those terms—their ultimate concern is this great egalitarian Web of Life. ([Location 1398](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0CLR9BB9V&location=1398)) - Indeed most believers in this New Paradigm in Science have not had a Waking Up realization; they are simply thinking about this oneness using their spiritual intelligence—and that’s totally fine; it’s just not Waking Up. We’ve spent so much time talking about the differences between Waking Up and Growing Up in order to help us recognize one point: simply learning systems theory, or learning about quantum entanglement, or learning a supposed New Paradigm will do nothing to produce a Waking Up in you. That conceptual kind of knowledge is only a knowledge by description; it’s not a knowledge by acquaintance. It will not help you Wake Up but will only advance your capacity to think narratively and conceptually using the spiritual intelligence in Growing Up. It’s learning horizontally, not transforming vertically. ([Location 1417](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0CLR9BB9V&location=1417)) - these levels will usually be given different names depending on which line is involved. Thus, for example, the same ethnocentric stage of development will be named “concrete operational” in the cognitive line (Piaget), “conventional” in the moral line (Kohlberg), “conformist” in the ego-development line (Loevinger), and “belongingness” in the needs line (Maslow). They all refer to the same level of the Growing Up process (you can see this in the similarity of the terms used). ([Location 1550](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0CLR9BB9V&location=1550)) - Researcher/system Growing Up stage Integral crimson archaic-fusion Fowler stage 0 Freud oceanic state Gebser archaic Kegan order 0 Kohlberg stage 0 Loevinger symbiotic Maslow physiological needs Piaget early sensorimotor intelligence ([Location 1596](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0CLR9BB9V&location=1596)) - Spiritual Awareness = Spiritual Intelligence × Spiritual Experience Or in more general terms: Spiritual Awareness = Growing Up × Waking Up ([Location 1782](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0CLR9BB9V&location=1782)) - The shamanic view often saw reality as divided into three major realms: the lower world, the middle world (this world), and the upper world—and the shaman understood the secret unity of these worlds and could travel to all three of them. (This unity of the three worlds is a direct result of the Nature-mysticism type of spiritual experience, carried out—according to the intensity scale from communion to union to identity—mostly at the communion degree. That’s why you don’t hear, in the shamanic literature, of any state resembling a strong identity degree of the unio mystica type.) ([Location 1934](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0CLR9BB9V&location=1934)) - THE LITERAL MEANING OF ORIGINAL MYTHS Unlike the way many modern Western thinkers want to see them, myths are not profound metaphors or analogies with deep meanings—they are simply, literally, exactly what they say they are—accounts of historical events: God really did rain locusts down on the Egyptians; Christ really was born of a biological virgin; Elijah really did go straight to heaven in his chariot at death; Lot’s wife really was turned into a pillar of salt; and so on: there is nothing deeply metaphoric about any of that, it’s simply mythic literal. ([Location 2034](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0CLR9BB9V&location=2034)) - We’ve seen that absolutistic beliefs usually come from this mythic stage, which is, relatively speaking, a fairly low stage of Growing Up. This can happen in one of two ways: (1) you can evolve and arrive at this absolutistic stage in your own growth, or (2) you can regress to it from a higher stage. (Your being at this stage means that all, or at least a significant portion, of your proximate or central self is identified with this stage.) As for (2), whenever your belief system—whatever its nature and from whatever higher stage—is held in a fanatical and zealous fashion, and with such an absolutistic faith that it becomes virtually unquestionable, then you indeed tend to regress to this absolutistic stage. ([Location 2056](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0CLR9BB9V&location=2056)) - If a conveyor belt were in place, and you went to see a priest or minister or pastor about becoming a Christian, for instance, you would be given a pamphlet that outlines the six or so major levels of Christian understanding—for example, magic Christianity, mythic Christianity, rational Christianity, pluralistic Christianity, and integral Christianity. Spiritual education would proceed in the same way that public school education, and virtually any education, already does, through a series of grades. You start at first grade and proceed through at least sixth grade and then beyond to higher grades. We have no problem understanding and accepting a grade-oriented approach in education—since we already use it—and I see no reason why we would have any problem if this approach were equally applied to spiritual education. And in this view, it does not reflect negatively on someone to be at any of the “lower” levels of faith, because one’s real salvation still rests with Waking Up, and a person can experience a profound Waking Up at almost any stage of Growing Up. (Although it is true that the better interpretations come from the higher stages of growth.) ([Location 2189](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0CLR9BB9V&location=2189)) - This stage involves a continuing cognitive growth and hence the emergence beyond the 2nd-person capacity of ethnocentric mythic (with its “us versus them” mentality) to a 3rd-person capacity of universal rational (which embraces not just “us” but “all of us” in a single, global humanity). ([Location 2250](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0CLR9BB9V&location=2250)) - belief). And this capacity for 3rd-person, worldcentric, universal, and rational (and not just mythic) thinking brought with it the quite sudden emergence of all the pioneering modern sciences—modern physics, modern astronomy, modern biology, modern chemistry, and so forth, all starting around three to four hundred years ago. At the same time, the sense of self shifted from an ethnocentric-conformist role to an individualistic-egoic role, with an emphasis on universal individual rights, liberty, and freedom. ([Location 2255](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0CLR9BB9V&location=2255)) - The causal indicates the very first of the manifest dimensions of existence. That is, as Spirit creates and manifests this universe moment to moment—or as the entire manifest universe emerges from the Ground of All Being, moment to moment—the very first forms that are created or emerge are said to be the “causal Forms”—the Greeks called them “archetypes” (primordial forms). Some Traditions (such as Vedanta) call this state “causal” because it is the cause of all the lesser forms and dimensions of existence; other Traditions (such as Tibetan Buddhism) call it the “very subtle” (beyond the “subtle”) because it is the subtlest of all manifest dimensions. ([Location 2515](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0CLR9BB9V&location=2515)) - In my view, although the pure cessation of infinite Emptiness that was the goal of Buddhist practice was not particularly new or different from that of many other religions, its interpretive grid, or the level of Growing Up from which it interpreted its Waking Up, was indeed quite different. It was not magic or mythic but orange rational—and this was definitely quite new and, at the time, profoundly different from virtually any other major religion.[5] ([Location 2593](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0CLR9BB9V&location=2593)) - Thus, more rational forms of spirituality do become very common at this orange structure-stage (as well as at the next major worldcentric stage, the green pluralistic stage). As one’s stage of Growing Up moves beyond the mythic, then all higher stages will be postmythic or rationally accepting. As spiritual intelligence begins moving away from more traditional forms of mythic religion, often rational sciences like systems theory start to be used to explain spirit as a great Web of Life; or quantum mechanics is used to offer proof of the interconnectedness of all life (an admittedly pantheistic view).[6] One may or may not have a direct Waking Up experience at these orange or green stages; but if one does, it will be interpreted according to the terms of that stage itself. ([Location 2629](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0CLR9BB9V&location=2629)) - Because of its 4th-person metasystemic capacity to reflect on the systems created by the previous 3rd-person rational stage, it is often highly critical of those systems, claiming that they are created by “tyrannical power” and need to be “deconstructed,” especially if they are seen as creating inequalities between groups that should be treated equally. ([Location 2753](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0CLR9BB9V&location=2753)) - The orange distinction of winners and losers is replaced by the green distinction of oppressors and victims. (Clearly, both distinctions exist in the real world. The trick, Integral maintains, is how to integrate them, since neither orange nor green wants to do this.) ([Location 2795](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0CLR9BB9V&location=2795)) - Both orange and green, being worldcentric, tend to say that they are in favor of both freedom and equality for everybody. But there are some significant differences in how they use those terms, which are related to the differences between equal opportunity (orange’s freedom) and equal outcome (green’s equity). For example, there is equal opportunity when everybody who is qualified to perform a particular job is able to apply for it and will be considered solely on their merits. Nobody is rejected just because they are gay, black, female, or a member of some minority. That is embracing freedom—orange wants to make sure everybody who is qualified has the freedom to apply. ([Location 2798](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0CLR9BB9V&location=2798)) - Here we have to be extremely careful. Green will tend to look at any deviations from equal outcome as being due solely to discrimination and oppression. Healthy green will not tend to do this as much, but a dysfunctional green—a “broken green”—will see any and all deviations from equal outcome as being due solely to discrimination or oppression. ([Location 2819](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0CLR9BB9V&location=2819)) - this difference in interests has been tested in numerous cultures all over the world, and the more egalitarian the culture is, the greater those differences become—which tends to indicate that the more equally men and women are treated, the more their own natural interests are allowed to come to the fore. ([Location 2831](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0CLR9BB9V&location=2831)) - Graves labeled the amber, orange, and green stages, respectively, “absolutistic,” “multiplistic,” and “relativistic.” Notice the progression—from an ethnocentric group absolutistically having the one and only truth (which is a myth), to a multiplistic rationality that recognizes that anything can be looked at from many different perspectives (including that of modern science, whose rationality is believed to give a much more accurate truth than myth), to a relativistic postmodernism, whose increased complexity cuts truth loose from any anchoring and makes it deeply relative (and since in this “posttruth” world, all truths are relative, they all have the same value; hence this stage’s emphasis on egalitarianism, multiculturalism, and equal outcomes). ([Location 2876](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0CLR9BB9V&location=2876)) - If either the multiplistic view (orange) or the relativistic view (green) is held in a truly fanatical, zealous, and absolutistic fashion—as often happens in the culture wars—then the person can actually regress to absolutistic amber, which, along with all other amber beliefs, is deeply ethnocentric and quite convinced that it has the one and only truth. ([Location 2882](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0CLR9BB9V&location=2882)) - It drives political correctness, identity politics, and far-Left politics. Identity politics starts out wanting more of an equal outcome for all minorities, but it is, by definition, ethnocentric identity politics. That you deliberately choose to belong to one identity rather than another means that you are deliberately choosing to be ethnocentric. The more zealously and absolutistically a person holds those identities, the more likely they are to regress to amber ethnocentric. Thus they inadvertently become living examples of the types of ethnocentric racism or sexism they are protesting against so aggressively. This is why the far Left are sometimes called “the regressive Left”—they are indeed regressing from green to amber. So regressively ethnocentric do they become, they imagine that it is not even necessary for them to talk to their opponents, who are often simply shouted down. In other words, they have become a new fundamentalist religion, with their own dogma and heretics and blasphemers. ([Location 2887](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0CLR9BB9V&location=2887)) - The central problem with broken green is that it believes that all differences between groups are solely the result of discrimination and oppression. If everybody does not finish the race of life at the same time, this not because there are winners and losers, or differences in interests or desires—there are only oppressors and victims. ([Location 2895](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0CLR9BB9V&location=2895)) - healthy green has many virtues, which I summarize as (1) contextualism (all meaning is context dependent), (2) constructivism (all realities are constructed, in the sense of possessing development, as stage after stage is constructed), and (3) aperspectivism (there is no dominant and exclusively correct perspective). All of those terrific ideas were contributed by green pluralistic. ([Location 2992](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0CLR9BB9V&location=2992)) - All previous stages—archaic fusion, red magic, amber mythic, orange rational, and green postmodern—are often combined into what is called “1st tier,” because they all have one thing in common: each 1st-tier stage thinks that its truth and values are the only important truth and values in existence; all the others are childish, confused, goofy, or just plain wrong. ([Location 3205](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0CLR9BB9V&location=3205)) - when turiyatita One Taste came into existence, it was almost always accompanied by the Inclusive-Integral stage of development, which made the interpretation of One Taste so incredibly inclusive. Although the stages of Waking Up and Growing Up are relatively independent, when the turquoise Integral stage of Growing Up first became available, by its very nature it tended to push the highest stage of Waking Up into a turiyatita realization. It was the combination of these two (turiyatita One Taste interpreted by the Inclusive-Integral stage) that gave rise to such holistically inclusive and integrative approaches as Tibetan Buddhism, Tantra, Vedanta, and Vajrayana in general. ([Location 3246](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0CLR9BB9V&location=3246)) - Of course, reaching the Integral stage itself does not automatically include a Waking Up experience, since Growing Up and Waking Up are indeed relatively independent. At the same time, because the most adequate, inclusive, and thus “best” stage from which to experience and interpret a Waking Up awareness is indeed the turquoise Integral stage (because it’s the most comprehensive), the ideal aim of somebody at the Integral stage, when it comes to spiritual engagement itself, is to undertake practices and exercises that will help them directly experience a genuine Waking Up. ([Location 3278](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0CLR9BB9V&location=3278)) - Although this is technically a separate issue, I have already suggested that it seems very likely that the spiritual schools that were created in relation to the experience of One Taste were founded by teachers who also had access to an Inclusive-Integral stage of development, or at least to a type of proto-Integral cognition (for example, Nagarjuna and Plotinus). ([Location 3289](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0CLR9BB9V&location=3289)) - let me very briefly go over the role of Nagarjuna and his revolutionary discoveries from an explicitly Integral perspective so we can see exactly what was involved. ([Location 3310](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0CLR9BB9V&location=3310)) - Nirvana is a very, very real state, and it does provide a type of genuine freedom and liberation from the entire manifest universe. ([Location 3322](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0CLR9BB9V&location=3322)) - People often have difficulty distinguishing between, or least remembering, the difference between Witnessing and One Taste. The difference between Witnessing Awareness and One Taste Awareness is simply a difference in your relationship with the totality of the Painting of All That Is. In the former (the Witness), you stand Free of the totality and simply witness it as object, with the Witness itself (as Absolute Subjectivity, pure Seer, or True Self) remaining completely and radically Free of all objects whatsoever (neti, neti). In the latter (One Taste), you go one step further and dissolve the Witness into the Total Painting itself, and thus drop any sensation of being separate from anything that is arising—a pure One Taste awareness. There is now not so much a sense of Freedom from the All but a sense of Fullness with or as the All—not Freedom from, but Oneness with. ([Location 5451](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0CLR9BB9V&location=5451)) - Simply experience everything you’re experiencing; avoid nothing. Start by resting in a fully all-inclusive Witnessing Awareness of the totality of the Painting of All That Is. And this totality is every single thing and event, sensation and impulse, feeling and desire, that is arising in your experience right now—the Painting of All That Is (the entire world for you). ([Location 5460](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0CLR9BB9V&location=5460)) - A helpful key is to notice that, in every case, our normal or typical awareness is driven by a fundamental avoidance, a primordial fear, a contraction. In each moment, there is something that we don’t want to look at—some idea, thought, perception, impulse, sensation, thing, or event. We therefore turn away, look away, move away—and that fundamental avoidance is the cause of the entire misery of humankind. In a chain reaction, it creates one dualism after another, one fragmentation after another, one brokenness after another—and a synonym for brokenness is suffering. ([Location 5463](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0CLR9BB9V&location=5463)) - One of the most common manifestations of this Primordial Avoidance is the sensation of a type of vague but very noticeable tension, a type of self-contracting, a tightening in experience. There is not a full Awareness of all experience but a narrowed attention to just some of it, a focusing, a constricting. But notice that even though there is this self-contracting tension, you can be aware of it—and that which is Aware of this self-contraction is itself free of it. ([Location 5467](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0CLR9BB9V&location=5467)) - And like all paintings, all of the present moment’s qualities are needed for the full Painting to even make sense. We need the ups and downs, the light spaces and the dark, the mountains and the valleys, the good and the evil, the pleasure and the pain, the happiness and the sadness, in order for any of these qualities to manifest at all. ([Location 5478](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0CLR9BB9V&location=5478)) - the first step with both the Witness and One Taste is to start by resting in an all-inclusive Witnessing Awareness of the totality of the Painting of All That Is. The key is to allow a Mirror-Mind Awareness to function without any contracting, avoiding, looking away, or turning away—experience all experience; allow all experience to fully arise, just as it is, right now, and let all of it totally wash through you with no contracting and no denial. Face everything; avoid nothing. ([Location 5489](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0CLR9BB9V&location=5489)) - The practice is quite literally to move from something (the ego), to nothing (the Witness), to everything (One Taste). ([Location 5523](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0CLR9BB9V&location=5523)) - There are, to speak very generally, two fundamental types of activities for getting one’s awareness into the higher and highest states of consciousness. These can be called “practice” and “recognition.” In a practice type of meditation, you take up certain exercises and practice them, attempting to get your awareness from a point where it is not in the higher state to a point where it is in the higher state. The result of this practice is an accomplishment, an achievement, something that you have attained—you have moved your awareness from a lower state to a higher state. This is probably the most common type of meditation, and it definitely works. It works, that is, for getting into higher states, but not for the highest state. You can get into higher states, because they are relative; they are not ultimate states. They are not the highest state because the highest states are absolute and ultimate, which means that they are eternal or timeless, which means that they are ever-present, which means that they are fully the case right here, right now, and there is no way whatsoever that they can be entered, attained, or achieved. ([Location 5527](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0CLR9BB9V&location=5527)) - These states in their true nature are not so much like states as they are like ever-present conditions. Maslow called them “plateau experiences,” which are essentially permanent, instead of “peak experiences,” which are temporary. Relative states are different from other relative states, and as one state comes to be, other states are pushed out—you can’t be drunk and sober at the same time; you can’t be straight and high at the same time; you can’t be in a deep dreamless state and a dream state at the same time; and so on. Relative states alternate with each other; they take turns. ([Location 5538](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0CLR9BB9V&location=5538)) - To see what this means, start by relaxing into a Witnessing Awareness and simply witness the present moment. Notice that this present moment arises, exists for a second or two, and then fades into the past, as a new present moment arises and comes to your Awareness and the old moment becomes a memory. The new moment lasts for a brief second or so, and then it fades into the past as well, and a new moment arises. And this movement is constant, it just goes on and on and on. The Christian mystics call this the nunc fluens, “the flowing present,” or “the passing present.” But notice the Witness itself. Notice the Awareness of this passing present, a passing present that moves continuously from present to past. The pure Witness of this moment does not itself change; it’s just a constant Presence, a pure unmoving point of being Aware, a true constant Mirror Mind. It merely watches the passing present arise, stay a bit, and pass; arise, stay a bit, and pass. The Witness remains completely unmoved and unmoving, a pure, unending Present or timeless Now—what Daniel P. Brown calls a “Boundless, Changeless Awareness.” ([Location 5560](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0CLR9BB9V&location=5560)) - Usually, if you are given a mindfulness practice, you will be told to focus your attention on the immediate present moment, and pay no attention at all to past or future events. This is called “being aware of just the immediate present.” But all this will get you is the nunc fluens, the passing present; it will not get you the real nunc stans, the timeless Now—and that timeless Now is not hard to attain but impossible to avoid. ([Location 5578](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0CLR9BB9V&location=5578)) - So the Witness—because it deals only with Realities—is always operating fully in this Now-moment, and the passing present moves through the Space of that unchanging, ever-present, timeless Now. The contents of Awareness exist in time; the Awareness itself does not. ([Location 5590](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0CLR9BB9V&location=5590)) - The gross (waking), subtle (dreaming), and causal (deep sleep) states are all relative states. They all exist in the stream of time, the stream of the passing present; they all begin, they stay a while, and they go; they all can be practiced, attained, and achieved—therefore they all can be objects of a practice type of meditation ([Location 5643](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0CLR9BB9V&location=5643)) - The 4th state—turiya, the Witness, or I AMness—and the 5th state—turiyatita, Suchness, or One Taste—are both absolute or ultimate states: they are timeless, ever present, always already; and they are infinite, all-inclusive, and all-embracing.[4] They are always already fully present and fully functioning in the timeless Now, so they cannot be entered into, attained, or achieved; they can only be recognized or realized. The timeless Now or Standing Present easily and fully embraces the past, the present, and the future—it allows all past thoughts, all present thoughts, and all future thoughts to fully arise right now in the ever-present Standing Present, which is thus truly all-inclusive and all-pervading. ([Location 5645](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0CLR9BB9V&location=5645)) - So this is the “nonpractice” of recognition. It is not entering a state that you were not previously in but have, through practice, brought about; it is the simple and immediate recognition of a state that has always been present but which you have not fully noticed. ([Location 5655](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0CLR9BB9V&location=5655)) - The Freedom of the Witness is felt as Bliss, and the Fullness of One Taste is felt as Love. ([Location 5701](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0CLR9BB9V&location=5701)) - This practice is particularly helpful with negative, frightening, or intensely uncomfortable states. Simply practice Witnessing them directly, with the understanding that “I am fully aware of this state of pain, anxiety, or depression; I have this state, but I am not this state”—and truly get that “therefore I am Free of it.” Right now, if you are aware of your body, you immediately know that you are not your body (you’re seeing it as an object, so it’s not your True Subject). Likewise, if you are aware of your mind (or thoughts), it will be just as obvious that you are not your mind (it’s just another series of passing thoughts, perfectly seen objects, so it’s not your True Subject). “I have a body and mind, but I am not my body or mind.” You should feel a genuine release, a letting go, an opening, a clearing, a freeing—and a type of happiness or joy at being that Free. ([Location 5733](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0CLR9BB9V&location=5733)) - The True Self is the pure Seer, which itself can never be seen. So when you go in search of this True Self, you won’t see it. ([Location 5740](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0CLR9BB9V&location=5740)) - All that you will be aware of is a genuine sense of vast Freedom, deep Release, radical Letting Go. Instead of being identified with some isolated self-image, self-concept, or egoic contraction, you are an all-seeing atmosphere of pure Awareness, a Mirror Mind that effortlessly reflects every single thing and event in experience but identifies with, or gets stuck to, none of them. You are a pure Mirror Mind of neti, neti, an effortless, easy Awareness that is not identified with any of its contents but simply rests as an infinite and completely released Freedom, totally beyond any of the self-contracting torment, torture, agony, and pain that haunts all things, objects, and events of the manifest world—a torture your ego knows all too well, and a torture the Witness is radically Free of. ([Location 5742](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0CLR9BB9V&location=5742)) - And it’s not that various sorts of torments cease entirely to arise; it’s rather “Who cares if they do?”—they’re just more transitory objects that come and go and are simply Witnessed like everything else. Some things might even hurt more, but they bother you less. ([Location 5748](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0CLR9BB9V&location=5748)) - Remember that, to the Witness, the entire world does appear as “other”—it appears “in front.” This is why the Witness is indeed an Absolute Subjectivity—it is, in the final analysis, a subjective or a self condition, not a unified or nondual condition. This is exactly why Daniel P. Brown, who names this 4th state “Boundless, Changeless Awareness,” also maintains that it is the penultimate state (it is the 4th of his 5 major states), and he says that the illusory part of this state is what he calls “individuality.” In other words, turiya introduces the very beginning of the dualistic condition, which is that of a subject versus an object (or individuality, which is accompanied, in Integral Metatheory, by the duality of single versus plural, which gives the 4 quadrants, which are the actual beginning of duality, which if seen apart from ultimate Spirit, is the beginning of illusion). So this True Self is both the very highest reality in the dualistic realm and the final barrier to the ultimate nondual realm. It is the highest pointer and the final obstacle. ([Location 5791](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0CLR9BB9V&location=5791)) - The required final step into the 5th state of One Taste is to continue Witnessing all of the Total Painting, remaining as an unperturbed Seer who is Looking at each and every thing, and then to gently but fully relax this Witness into everything that is being witnessed. So you go from merely Looking at the mountain to simply being the mountain; you no longer see the clouds, you are the clouds; you no longer feel the earth, you are the earth; you no longer see the sun, you are the sun. This nondual Oneness means that the very sensation of being a Looker (or Witness) actually turns out to be utterly identical to the sensation of that which is being looked at. In other words, if you feel the Witness or Looker right now, then focus directly on the feeling of what you are looking at—it could be a tree, a car, a building, a computer screen—they turn out to be one and the same feeling. Suddenly, “out there” and “in here” both evaporate into “just this”—this single present experience of Thusness or Suchness—One Taste. ([Location 5807](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0CLR9BB9V&location=5807)) - Douglas Harding’s simple exercise, I often call this One Taste Awareness the “headless” state.[2] ([Location 5816](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0CLR9BB9V&location=5816)) - Harding’s description of this headless state is an incredibly effective pointing-out instruction for getting into One Taste. As Harding himself puts it, notice in this moment that “you can’t really see your head”—not directly. If you focus on the area where your head is, all that you will see are two fleshy blobs, which is your nose. But as for your complete head itself, it’s just not there; you can’t see it. You might feel that you are looking out of your head at the world around you, but your head itself is not something you can see. You’re actually “headless.” ([Location 5817](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0CLR9BB9V&location=5817)) - So here are the pointing-out instructions. While looking out at the world, pick an object that you can clearly see—a mountain, a building, a car, a tree, the book in front of you. Try doing that right now—select an object and look directly at it. While looking at this object, focus on the area of your head. You will notice that, instead of seeing a head just sitting there on your shoulders, you actually see the object itself—for example, the building—sitting directly right there, on your shoulders, right where your head used to be. The building isn’t “out there,” on the other side of your face; it’s actually arising “right here,” on this side of your face—the building, in fact, is arising within you. It is arising in the empty space where you thought your head was. In fact, everything you’re now looking at is arising right in the space where you thought your head was—there’s no separation at all. If this insight clicks, then you’ll realize that, no matter what you are looking at, there isn’t an “in here” that is separate from an “out there” that it stands back from and looks at—there is “just this” single experience, which is the object arising on this side of your face right where your head used to be. This is such an obvious experience that “out there” and “in here” actually start to lose any meaning. ([Location 5821](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0CLR9BB9V&location=5821)) - Thus I disidentify with any and every thing that can be seen, felt, or perceived—resting in my own pure I AMness, where I AM not this, not that. I am just the simple feeling of I AMness before I am anything in particular. I am pure, free, open, spacious, clear, and empty Witnessing Awareness, and I am Aware of the totality of the Painting of All That Is—while being utterly Free of All of it. ([Location 5876](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0CLR9BB9V&location=5876)) - There’s a very simple test to see if you are doing Witnessing practice correctly. You will know you are doing it right if you find that the relationship that you have to your own thoughts is no different than the relationship you have to exterior objects. ([Location 5900](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0CLR9BB9V&location=5900)) - You are not in this room; this room is in you—this room is arising within your Awareness. ([Location 5922](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0CLR9BB9V&location=5922)) - You start by noticing that, typically, you feel like you are “in here,” on this side of your face, and the rest of the world is arising “out there,” on the other side of your face. Now there is a certain relative truth to that—there is a relative self and a relative other. But underlying both of them is a background, unified state that is not split in two but is unitary (or more technically, a nonduality). When you are aware only of the split between subject and object, that is the self-contraction, the restricted, broken, and narrowed entity that is dualistic attention; it is the basic form of Primordial Avoidance itself (because you have to contract against the unity of the present moment in order to split it into an “inside” versus an “outside”—it never starts that way). So instead of contracting, take some object in your awareness—maybe that tree, or that car, or the clouds out there—and while looking at it, get the feel of “this side” of your face, the immediate feel of the “in-here-ness” that seems to be the location of the sense of yourself as a watcher or looker (we often feel that our “self” exists in our heads, looking through our eyes at the world out there). Steadily feel that “in-here-ness” space for a minute or so. Then, instead focus on the feeling of the objective tree “out there.” Feel the sensation of “treeness out there.” Next go back and forth a few times between the sensations of “self-in-here” and “tree-out-there,” and then suddenly, simply identify those two sensations (that is, recognize that in the immediateness of present Awareness, there is only one sensation). Recognize that the “out there” object is actually arising as one with the subject “in here,” right where your head used to be. Or, recognize that the object and the subject are one single experience, arising right here, right where you thought your head was. Get into this headless state, and then notice that the entire world “out there” is actually arising “in here,” right where your head used to be—so that both “in here” and “out there” disappear into “just this,” the single, presently arising experience of One Taste. ([Location 5931](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0CLR9BB9V&location=5931)) - To help you do this, notice the awareness of what seems to be the distance between those two sensations: there is the feeling of “in here,” and then—apparently separated from that by a long distance—there is the feeling of the tree “out there.” Simply allow that feeling of distance to disappear. ([Location 5947](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0CLR9BB9V&location=5947)) - One of the easiest ways to do this, if you are reading this in a book or on a computer screen, is to practice the headless state as you are reading this. As you are reading this, recognize that you don’t really have a head; rather, the reading material is arising right here, right where you thought your head was, and you are actually one with the material itself, it is actually arising in a single space, and you are fully one with that space (this is truly a very real One Taste experience). Then practice reading in that unified headless One Taste state. This might take a little bit of time and practice, we’re so used to reading with our head. But stay with it, it’s really an amazing experience. ([Location 5971](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0CLR9BB9V&location=5971)) - This sense of Oneness is also quite easy to realize while listening to music. Try it. Start by playing one of your favorite songs, let’s say, on the radio. Close your eyes. Notice that the music initially sounds like it’s coming from “out there,” from the radio. Then notice that you can also hear the music as if it’s coming from “in here,” from deep within your own brain. Then think about everything you have learned about the nature of the Oneness experience, and apply that directly to the sound of the music. Start by dissolving the distance between the music and you—simply dissolve into the stream of music itself, erasing any difference between you and the sound of the music, and hear it as if it were just one single stream of all-pervading music, pushing out any sense of your being a separate self, and uniting fully with the stream itself. There are not two experiences—the sound of music coming from the radio and your listening to it. There is just one experience—you are the music in a single stream. (This will be the same experience as you have when you do the “headless” practice.) To paraphrase the Zen master, “When I heard the sound of the music coming from the radio, there was no radio and no I, just the music.” ([Location 5976](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0CLR9BB9V&location=5976)) - In this state, do a quick experiment. Allow this One-Taste Awareness to expand to infinity. That is, let your Awareness get bigger and bigger, starting from where you are and expanding to include the entire planet, then the entire solar system (the sun, moon, and planets), then the entire galaxy, with billions and billions of stars, and then expand again to include all galaxies, the totality of galaxies. Your Awareness is expanding past all of them and embracing and enfolding all of them as it does so. Then allow your Awareness to completely expand to infinity itself—let it expand to the point where there is an endless beyond, yet your Awareness is aware of even that endless beyond—that utter infinity. Simply throw your Awareness out as far as it can possibly go, to the utter ends of the universe. Notice, at some point, that the outward movement of Awareness will stop, will come to some sort of an end that seems to be infinity. Why does it stop? How does it even know to… ([Location 5985](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0CLR9BB9V&location=5985)) ## New highlights added October 29, 2024 at 3:01 PM - We have to be especially careful when some “New Paradigm” in science purports to show that the unity it has discovered is the same Unity that the mystics have always pointed to. It’s common to say, for example, with David Bohm, that the “new physics” demonstrates that there is an “implicate order” of ultimate unity underlying the “explicate order” of separate things and events and that this “implicate unity” is the same ultimate Unity that has been seen by the world’s mystics. But one thing is certain: even if you learn every detail about some “New Paradigm” in science, you’re nowhere near having a real Waking Up experience that would actually show you that Reality. You’re just looking at more maps, and Bermuda itself is nowhere in sight. ([Location 3391](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0CLR9BB9V&location=3391)) - A perfect example of this, which I often use, is a real research project, where zealous antihomosexual crusaders—men who had spent much of their lives actively fighting against laws that protect gay people—were shown images of homosexual pornography (that is, actual gay sexual erotica), and these antigay crusaders demonstrated much more sexual arousal than the average straight male did. In other words, these crusaders themselves had homosexual desires, but they repressed those desires as shadow elements, projected that shadow material onto gay men, and then they tried to get rid of their own shadows by getting rid of gay men. This is classic shadow projection—and the shadowboxing that results. ([Location 3600](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0CLR9BB9V&location=3600)) - Although Cleaning Up and Growing Up are two very different processes, I have found that each major stage of Growing Up (as well as most states of Waking Up) can produce its own types of shadow material. Thus, corresponding to the spectrum of levels of development (in both Growing Up and Waking Up), there is a spectrum of shadow elements. There are crimson shadows, red shadows, amber shadows, orange shadows, green shadows, and turquoise shadows, along with shadows of each of the major stages of Waking Up. In this chapter, ([Location 3633](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0CLR9BB9V&location=3633)) - Robert Kegan and Lisa Laskow Lahey, in their book An Everyone Culture, show what happens when businesses include in their corporate culture an awareness of developmental stages and tie the exterior growth and profits of the business to the interior developmental growth of its employees. They found that when businesses do this, almost every measure of the business’s success increases dramatically, including staff happiness, reduced employee turnover, and degree of profits. ([Location 4897](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0CLR9BB9V&location=4897)) - DDO (deliberately developmental organization). A DDO pays attention not just to interiors but also to the actual stages of the interiors, the actual levels of Growing Up, and they include that knowledge (of the Upper Left) in the corporate culture (of the Lower Left)—both of which are interior, Left-hand realities. When they do that, the real growth in their human capital—as well as the real growth in the business itself—becomes obvious to all concerned, and things begin explosively to improve. ([Location 4902](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0CLR9BB9V&location=4902)) - Any truly Integral approach to our problems would maintain that our society needs to become a DDC (deliberately developmental culture). ([Location 4919](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0CLR9BB9V&location=4919)) - Alan Watkins and I have a term for these especially nasty global problems; they are “wicked problems.”[7] There are many things that mark something that we call a “wicked problem”; for example, they are multidimensional, have multiple stakeholders, multiple causes, multiple symptoms, multiple solutions, and are constantly evolving—and today, that basically means that they are global. ([Location 4921](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0CLR9BB9V&location=4921)) - Thus, the central element in any green postmodern social agenda—if it wanted to be truly effective and actually succeed in advancing green values—would have to be to propose and seriously support the ways and means (educational, economic, technological, and cultural) that would help individuals grow and develop in their interiors to the higher, worldcentric stages (and green would especially aim for the postmodern worldcentric stage). It would have to work, in other words, to help create a DDC—a deliberately developmental culture. This is the only way that support for green can actually be created and enhanced. ([Location 4956](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0CLR9BB9V&location=4956)) - The Nightmare of Modernity The greatest sin of modernity was indeed that, alongside of its stunning advances and progress in the exterior, Right-hand dimensions of reality, it almost fully erased and deleted any reality for the interior, Left-hand dimensions. The official background philosophy of the modern Western world, to this day, is scientific materialism, which considers the scientific exploration of the material dimensions of reality (“matter” in the second sense—that is, any Right-hand dimension) to be the only sure route to gaining any real and enduring knowledge. ([Location 5029](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0CLR9BB9V&location=5029)) - It was certainly engaged in by the Enlightenment. Says Lovejoy, “Next to the word ‘Nature,’ ‘the Great Chain of Being’ was the sacred phrase of the eighteenth century.”[2] The Great Chain ensured that no matter how separate or isolated any parts might look, they were actually interwoven parts of a great Whole, and that Whole was the ultimate reality, so that the aim of any true thinker was to demonstrate this Wholeness. Diderot’s Encyclopédie (the rational bible of the Enlightenment) began its entry on the advancement of knowledge: “Everything in nature is linked together,” and “the art of the philosopher consists in adding new links to the separated parts.” Small wonder that scientists and philosophers alike “were wont, when they reached the height of their argument, to discourse with eloquence on the perfection of the Universal System as a whole.”[3] As Pascal himself put it, “Its parts all are so related and interlinked with one another that it is impossible to know the parts without knowing the whole or the whole without knowing all the parts.”[4] ([Location 5064](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0CLR9BB9V&location=5064)) - By “value spheres,” Weber meant the Big Three (the 4 quadrants)—modernity was marked by the differentiation of the spheres of the Good (morals), the True (science), and the Beautiful (art), which allowed wonderful progress to be made in all of them. At the previous stage—amber, traditional, mythic-religious—the quadrants were largely fused or undifferentiated: whatever the Church proclaimed was taken to be the way it was, whether that had to do with the Good, the True, or the Beautiful. These three spheres had not yet been clearly differentiated and released from Church domination. Thus, the churchmen saw no reason to actually look through Galileo’s telescope—the Bible told them exactly what they would see. But the orange modern stage introduced precisely that differentiation, and thus it allowed artistic Beauty, moral Goodness, and philosophical and scientific Truth to explore their own ways and develop their own means, methods, and logics. ([Location 5083](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0CLR9BB9V&location=5083)) - THE ENORMOUSLY GREAT AND TOTALLY MIXED ADVANCE OF MEASUREMENT What exactly happened? Especially given the wonderful start, with modernity’s idea of a completely interwoven Great Holarchy and the all-inclusive System of Nature? As background to answer this question, we start to see, over a century or two, the profound change in the meaning of “matter” that we discussed earlier—namely, matter is no longer viewed as the lowest and bottom rung of reality (which meant, for most of history, the bottom rung in the Great Chain); rather it starts to be viewed as the exterior dimension of every rung. ([Location 5117](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0CLR9BB9V&location=5117)) - when science maintained that measurement was the key to reality, it almost automatically meant that only the objective, 3rd-person exteriors were to be taken to be real. As a result, the new scientific method very quickly led people to embrace scientific materialism. And this meant a deeply earnest and official promise from the modern West that, from this time forward, it sincerely would not Show Up. So it came about that Nature was conceived as a great interwoven and interlocking system but composed of nothing but physical elements, sensory surfaces, and material realities. In other words, all quadrants were reduced to the Lower Right quadrant. I call this “subtle reductionism”—“subtle” because it’s easy to miss the reductionism because it still covers all the interwoven Web insofar as it contains the material correlates of all the quadrants, although it leaves out the interior quadrants themselves. It still believes in the great System of Nature but only in Nature that can be seen (that is, videotaped) with the senses or their extensions—that is, 3rd-person evidence. (Gross reductionism goes even further and reduces those wholes to their atomistic parts—reduces the Lower Right to the Upper Right. This started to occur during the Enlightenment and is often confused with the main “crime” of the Enlightenment, although it was really just a byproduct of it.) ([Location 5195](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0CLR9BB9V&location=5195)) - The final aspect of this problem was that even though science itself reached global, worldcentric levels of development, our interiors did not reach these same levels of global development, because they weren’t even being tracked anymore or even considered to be real. Because of this enormous imbalance between our exterior science, technology, and artifacts and our interior levels of consciousness, culture, and wisdom, our problems became globally suicidal—and there is where our modern world still stands today. ([Location 5237](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0CLR9BB9V&location=5237)) - As we just noted, ever since the emergence of modern science, there has been, within science itself, a heated battle between subtle reductionism, which claims that reality is ultimately composed of systemic wholes made of dynamically interacting material elements and processes, and gross reductionism, which claims that reality is composed of nothing but those isolated material elements themselves—a battle, in short, between various forms of dynamic systems theory and various forms of materialistic atomism. All of this infighting has occurred solely within the Right-hand, exterior quadrants, of course—none of the interiors are included in this battle (systems theory doesn’t even pretend to deal with the phenomenal realities of beauty, morals, love, goodness, value, or 1st-person consciousness as 1st person). ([Location 5243](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0CLR9BB9V&location=5243)) - Although you can engage in all of these practices of Big Wholeness right now—Showing Up, Growing Up, Waking Up, Opening Up, and Cleaning Up—by the time such an Integral approach becomes a full and significant part of a future society, that society will be one in which robotics has almost fully replaced any and all sorts of human work. We will exist in a leisure culture that allows us a life span of literally several hundred years to do pretty much whatever we want. And a large measure of what we will want will be ways to Wake Up, Grow Up, Clean Up, and Show Up—if for no other reason than that they will be almost all that’s left for us to do with our time. No robot will be able to do them for us, and thus we will be doing them for ourselves—happily. And so we will eagerly engage in the journey and adventure of finding ourselves growing, expanding, and evolving from an identity with just this single, isolated organism to an identity with every single thing and event in the entire Kosmos—a Kosmic consciousness that is our own deepest and truest Nature, our own Original Face. ([Location 5310](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0CLR9BB9V&location=5310)) - As for technological predictions, it’s the widespread faith of Silicon Valley that we are moving into a future of “transhumanism”—where human beings will be able to download their consciousness into computers and thus will be able to live indefinitely, live basically forever. Just be careful—you’ll live forever as long as nobody drops your computer and shatters it. No materially constructed computer is guaranteed to be completely indestructible and therefore to persist forever—and thus nothing that depends upon it will be either. ([Location 5319](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0CLR9BB9V&location=5319)) - And consider this: what level of consciousness do you want to be at when your consciousness is downloaded—and remember, this is basically for ever and ever? Do you want to be able to Wake Up, or just spend the rest of everlasting time in an illusory, egoic state of awareness? It looks like transhumanism equals everlasting ignorance (nonenlightenment). Do you really want that—to continue to be stupid forever? ([Location 5323](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0CLR9BB9V&location=5323)) - Harding’s description of this headless state is an incredibly effective pointing-out instruction for getting into One Taste. As Harding himself puts it, notice in this moment that “you can’t really see your head”—not directly. If you focus on the area where your head is, all that you will see are two fleshy blobs, which is your nose. But as for your complete head itself, it’s just not there; you can’t see it. You might feel that you are looking out… ([Location 5817](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0CLR9BB9V&location=5817)) - So here are the pointing-out instructions. While looking out at the world, pick an object that you can clearly see—a mountain, a building, a car, a tree, the book in front of you. Try doing that right now—select an object and look directly at it. While looking at this object, focus on the area of your head. You will notice that, instead of seeing a head just sitting there on your shoulders, you actually see the object itself—for example, the building—sitting directly right there, on your shoulders, right where your head used to be. The building isn’t “out there,” on the other side of your face; it’s actually arising “right here,” on this side of your face—the building, in fact, is arising within you. It is arising in the empty space where you thought your head was. In fact, everything you’re now looking at is arising right in the space where you thought your head was—there’s no separation at all. If this insight clicks, then you’ll realize that, no matter what you are looking at, there isn’t an “in here” that is separate from an “out there”… ([Location 5821](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0CLR9BB9V&location=5821)) ## New highlights added February 18, 2025 at 9:02 PM - Early Buddhism began as virtually all the great Axial-period (or great Mythic-Age) religions around the globe did: with a belief that the entire manifest world is rotten. It is samsara, inherently fallen, drenched in original sin, or what early Buddhism called dukkha, suffering. The manifest world of samsara is inherently marked by suffering. Wherever there is a manifest world and a sentient being, that sentient being is suffering, and there’s nothing whatsoever that can be done about it. However, one can get out of, or off of, the wheel of samsara altogether. In order to do this, one takes up a specific type of meditation, which is aimed at an exhaustive witnessing of the contents of consciousness, until one directly discovers the source of consciousness or awareness itself—that is, one discovers a pure nirvana, discovers the pure empty Witness, which itself is free of all objects, free of all manifestation, free of all samsara. The discovery of this purely formless, contentless, empty awareness is the discovery of nirvana, which is a timeless state radically free of all suffering, all ego, all desire, and all pain, because it is free of manifestation itself in any form. (It’s somewhat like the deep dreamless state.) ([Location 6171](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0CLR9BB9V&location=6171)) - But is this state of nirvana the highest state? As we saw earlier, the Buddhist genius Nagarjuna answered this question by saying, “No.” It is not the highest. It is the highest state in dualistic realms, but they are ultimately laced with illusion. Nirvana is split from samsara; Emptiness is split from Form; Heaven is split from earth. This clearly is not a holistic, unified, nondual state—it’s a fragmented, broken, dualistic state. And a broken state cannot give you a real and full Enlightenment. ([Location 6191](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0CLR9BB9V&location=6191)) - Thus, where the goal of the early Buddhist path was to be an arhat—a “solitary realizer” who had fully renounced samsara and escaped completely into nirodh, or pure nirvana, totally oblivious to the manifest world and all of its suffering beings, having vanished forever into the pure extinction of nirvana—the goal of the new Nondual path was to become a bodhisattva, whose primary vow was a promise NOT to disappear into nirodh or nirvana, never to appear in samsara again. The bodhisattva vowed to see the unity of nirvana and samsara and thus remain in the world of samsara helping all other beings to see that the reality of samsara was itself not-two with nirvana—in other words, a vow to help all sentient beings Awaken. ([Location 6219](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0CLR9BB9V&location=6219)) - I want to emphasize the special way that I am using the term Tantra. Although tantric essentials are basically similar the world over, there are some important differences. I’ve mentioned the brilliant Buddhist Nagarjuna several times. Well, Shankara is to Vedantic Hinduism what Nagarjuna is to Mahayana Buddhism—namely, a genius of Nonduality, a supreme master of the Nondual in theory and practice. Nagarjuna was not a tantric practitioner himself—he was a master of Nonduality. So when Tantra—which is Nondual—was first developed in Buddhism, it often drew on Nagarjuna’s Nondual insights. The same with Shankara. He himself was not a tantric practitioner—he was a master of Nonduality—and thus when Hindu Tantra developed, it was similar to some of Shankara’s brilliant insights. I rely on both of them, as does the Integral view itself. ([Location 6257](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0CLR9BB9V&location=6257)) - There are two feelings in particular that are associated with the sex act that Tantra especially focuses on. There are, of course, many feelings associated with sex, but two stand out: (1) There is a warm, loving, embracing feeling—a heightened sense of becoming one with another being, and this feeling of love and loving oneness can be overwhelming at times. And (2), there is, especially with orgasm, a feeling of ecstasy, bliss, explosive joy and release—it will put a grin on your face and is generally taken to be the most fun you can have with your pants off. This love-bliss of sexuality is so overwhelming that there are many thinkers (including Freud) who believe that the sexual drive is the strongest drive that human beings have; and many also claim that it is the fundamental élan vital that moves the entire universe. ([Location 6270](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0CLR9BB9V&location=6270)) - These practices (by both sexes) are always coupled with breathing exercises that instead of allowing sexual sensations to orient downward and outward, deliberately refocus and guide them to move inward and upward. That is, with the out-breath, they move them from the genital area to the base of the spine, and from there up the spine to the brain itself, and then even beyond the brain to the infinite Light and Consciousness at and beyond the crown. Then on the in-breath, the entire sequence is reversed. The woman does the same thing, moving any sexual sensations (on the out-breath) from the genital region to the base of the spine to the crown and beyond to the entire Kosmos, and reversing the sequence on the in-breath, bringing the Light and Consciousness down from above and into the crown, then down the face and the body to the genital region below. ([Location 6299](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0CLR9BB9V&location=6299)) - When beginning sexual activity (and this can be straight, gay, lesbian, trans, bi, or any other form), begin by resting in the Witness, since we’re focusing on Bliss. Make sure that, as the Witness, your relationship to your body is exactly the same as your relationship to your partner’s body. The Witness, remember, is not more identified with feelings that occur “in here,” in your body/brain, than it is with objects arising “out there.” The Witness is neither inside nor outside—it evenly and equally Witnesses both inside and outside and is itself merely Free. So you can check if you are Witnessing correctly by making sure that, as the Witness, your relationship to objects arising “in here,” in the interior, is exactly the same as your relationship to objects arising “out there,” in the exterior—both interior and exterior are Witnessed exactly the same. So make sure that, as the Witness, your relationship to your body is just the same as your relationship to your partner’s body—they are both equally objects of your Witnessing Self, and you are identified with neither. You can even see both bodies as being one single body—but in any event, you are not identified with either one. You are the pure Witness in all its Freedom (I am not this, not that—I am Free from this and Free from that). If you cannot get fully into the Witness, get as close to it as possible, and then engage in the sexual practice however you wish. The one thing you want to do differently is that even though, as the Witness, you are not identified with any objects at all but are merely their pure Witness, nonetheless, in this specific practice, begin to take any feelings of pleasure or bliss, no matter where they originate, and directly identify them with the Witness. That is, feel the pleasure, then “feel” the Witness, and then identify those two sensations—the immediate feelings of pleasure or bliss and the feeling of the pure Witness. Allow that pleasure to begin to see the world; allow that pleasure to begin to Witness the world. We have already discovered that, ultimately, the Blissful Witness or a serene cognitive Blissfulness sees the world, and that is where this sexual practice is headed. ([Location 6351](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0CLR9BB9V&location=6351)) - Tibetan Buddhists call the Witness an “ongoing knowingness.” The “knowingness” is the cognitive part, and the “ongoing” is the always ongoing, ever-present, or eternal part. However, this phrase is used in a very special way by Tibetan Buddhists. They mean that when you are feeling this ongoing knowingness, you separate the feeling of knowing from anything that is known. In other words, you want just the feeling of knowing, not knowing something or knowing this or that—just the pure feeling of knowing itself. After all, the Witness is a pure Knower, not anything known. And further, the “ongoing” part doesn’t leave any room for knowing this, knowing that, or knowing some object, because no object is ever-present or eternal—all objects keep moving by in the passing present, in the world of time. So an “ongoing knowingness” means an “ongoing, ever-present Witness, which is also an “ever-present cognitive (or knowing) Blissfulness” (especially when we identify the Witness with any pleasure or bliss that arises). ([Location 6378](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0CLR9BB9V&location=6378)) - As orgasm approaches, relax your body into its present feelings, and prepare to take the intense feelings that arise with orgasm and directly apply them to the Witness. As you feel the beginning of intense orgasmic bliss, feel that the bliss is the same as your Witnessing Self, and look at the world through this Blissful Witness. Feel that orgasmic bliss to be one with the Witness itself; feel that bliss to be the very texture of the Observing Self, the very nature of the Seeing Self, and feel that bliss/Bliss looking at the entire world through the Witness in all directions. ([Location 6399](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0CLR9BB9V&location=6399))