Pure Subjectivity

by Bernadette Roberts

Not long ago, I had the good fortune to discuss this account with a contemplative priest who is also an experienced spiritual director and scholar in the varied traditions of the Christian contemplative life. From the outset he made it clear he could not concede the non-existence of the self at any stage because, from beginning to end, life is a series of subject-object or I-Thou relationships. Subjective union with an objective God annihilates neither subject nor object, nor does it discontinue their relationship; if this were so, who could affirm this union? Who could return from a transient experience of loss-of-self to declare he had no self? To say there is no self may be one way to describe such an experience, but it is not the way to establish such a reality which, in his opinion, could not be done. What is more, he found the circumstances of discussing no-self somewhat humorous. Here we were, he pointed out, two distinct individuals and personalities with two disagreeing minds, discussing our relationship with God. What could be more obvious or self-evident than these relationships? How could we ever get away from them? And if we could, what would be left to discuss?

Needless to say, I was fully aware of the problems involved in any discussion of no-self. I had already learned how empirical reality stands in the way as a barrier, not only limiting our vision, but limiting any discussion of no-self as well. Seemingly this barrier is the failure to realize that the reality we see, hear, feel, and think is so perishable, we can grind it down to a few elementary particles that even then, continue to baffle the mind. Nevertheless, I do not regard empirical reality as a true barrier to vision; on the contrary, it is the gateway through which we must pass in order to see what, if anything, lies on the other side. But the irony of this passage is that empirical reality is not seen as a barrier until the other side is reached, at which time, it is seen as no barrier at all. Therefore, it is only in retrospect we see this as a barrier to others, while knowing it is also the gate through which all must pass. Because I was aware of this, I readily understood my friend's point of view — at one time, my sole point of view — and realizing he did not share my present perspective, knew we were in agreement nevertheless, when using the same empirical data, the same tools as a common ground for discussion. It was like standing in a gateway discussing how far ahead we could see — an agreeable position, I felt, from which to disagree.

Those in a less advantageous position would be those who have skirted or surmounted empirical reality by some intellectual endeavor, without passing through it experientially. This could lead to a denial of empirical reality and, by making the ground we walk on a mere illusion, pull the rug out from under any meaningful discussion. When we cannot discuss what lies two feet ahead because it would be too un-understandable or too ineffable to do so, the subjects that matter most in life become so esoteric and privileged, they end up belonging to a few superior men; as someone once said to me, "when you see the world as illusion, you will have become a superman." Even if this incentive had not come too late, I would have preferred to pass through the gate of the known and remain as is, which means to discuss what is when the chance arises, as it did on this occasion.

What I discovered in the course of our discussion was how pure subjectivity was the keystone on which the experience of self either rises or falls. Though we didn't discuss the subject directly, it became clear that the possibility of passing from an ordinary subjective condition (or subject-object type of consciousness) to a condition of pure subjectivity (in which subject and object are identical) was the major clue to the disappearance of the self. The possibility of making this transition between two opposing types of consciousness or two different ways-of-knowing is important, because if this transition is not possible, self remains; but if the transition is possible, then self does not remain. The reason for saying this, I will attempt to put forward since it is the subject and concern of everything that follows.

Before proceeding, however, I must admit to being prejudiced in the matter. After making this journey, I have no choice but to believe this transition can not only be made, but that it is inherent in everyone to do so whether they realize it or not. Though I do not understand how it can be made on a purely intellectual or technical level, I am nevertheless familiar with the experiential aspects of such a crossing; so if the following explanation appears clumsy, it is because the particular level or view from which I speak does not always allow for logical fulfillment.

I will begin with my own definition of pure subjectivity. Basically, it is a way of knowing in which the knower, the known, and the knowing, are identical and inseparable. This identity, however, is not the identity of empirical or visual form; it is not the identity of mind or content or of anything generally falling within the realm of the known. Rather, it is the identity of a subject and object unknowable to the mind, an identity known only to itself. The basic knowledge of this identity is that it exists and knows itself as all that exists; thus, pure subjectivity is the eye of seeing itself, and wherever it looks it sees nothing but itself. It knows no within or without, nor would it be proper to ask "who" or "what" this eye belongs to, because any answer would give rise to a division between knower and known, which is not how this identity works. The eye seeing itself knows no "I, me, or mine" since it knows nothing that is not "I, me, or mine" and therefore has no need to make such a distinction. It does not belong to an individual subject or self, nor does it inhere in any thing or any object, because it is everything and belongs only to itself. In pure subjectivity there is no separation of the I and Thou or this and that because these words are mere labels for an empirical reality that falls short of the whole truth when it fails to unveil the eye seeing itself. Yet, despite the problem inherent in the use of words, I call this eye seeing itself "pure subjectivity" because it is the one subject, the one existent, in which there is complete identity between its existence, its knowing and its doing.

But there is another way of knowing that does not belong to the eye seeing itself. This is a condition of consciousness in which the knower is not identical with the known and thus, the subject always remains separate and divided from its object. This is our ordinary type of subjectivity in which everything known, including the self, is an object of consciousness, and this type of knowing (or consciousness) never sees itself directly, because as soon as it looks at itself, it sees itself as an object, not as a subject. For this reason, the subject can only be known through an objective method, made possible by a reflexive mechanism of the mind bending back on itself, whereby the subject can be aware of its own awareness, its own feelings and thoughts. Because of this objectifying mechanism, we know ourselves as subjects; and to know ourselves as subject by any other method is virtually impossible.

It seems that some people would have us believe that even when we do not reflect back on ourselves or see ourselves as objects we are, nevertheless, still aware of ourselves as subjects; but based on my experiences, this is not the way it works. Instead, I discovered that when you can no longer see yourself as object, you soon lose the ability to be aware of yourself as subject. This, at least, was my finding, and I think a simple test can reveal how this works.

Let us say, for the moment, it was possible for the subject to see itself as the subjective eye turned upon itself — what would it see? Obviously it would see absolutely nothing; if it saw "something," this something would only be an object to consciousness and would not be the subject to consciousness. This means that when we come upon the true subject of consciousness, we come upon nothing at all. We could not say the self-as-subject is identical with the self-as-object since nothing cannot be identical with something. It also means that self-as-object is not the true subject to consciousness because the true subject is unknowable — it is nothing to the mind.

From this we can conclude that all we know about ourselves (or self-as-object) is not only secondhand knowledge, it is not even the truth! Here the age-old dictum "know thyself" turns out to be the impossible dream. Like the myth of finding a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow, we dig and dig only to discover there is nothing there.

It is quite possible that at some time or other everyone has made contact with the self-as-subject. All that is required for such an encounter is the cessation of the reflexive movement of the mind bending back on itself. Without this reflexive (or pre-reflexive) movement, we are no longer aware of our own awareness, our own feelings and thoughts, and thus we have encountered self-as-subject. But since this subjective self is as nothing to the mind, we cannot stay in this condition for long and soon fall back into self-consciousness or self-as-object. To remain in this unreflexive condition for any length of time would mean encountering an emptiness, a void, a nothingness that is the subjective self — which I have called no-self.

As a contemplative, I was familiar with this condition and ever found it quiet, dark, and restful; sometimes it was even the gateway to "that" which lies beyond no-self. Yet it never occurred to me that this non-reflexive condition of the mind could become a permanent state. I could not see the possibility of remaining in this state while carrying out the ordinary mental and physical activities of daily life; thus, even if I had heard of such a possibility, I would not have deemed it a desirable or feasible way of practical living. Furthermore, I never believed in deliberately manipulating the mind because my particular contemplative path took the way of least resistance: by waiting effortlessly for some form of divine intervention. As I conceived it, spending my whole life waiting for God was the good life.

Whether or not there honestly exist certain techniques of mind-manipulation that can bypass the need for divine intervention, or the need to wait upon God, is something I do not know. Nor can I imagine how anyone can put a permanent, irrevocable end to the reflexive movement of the mind without running into certain psychological dangers. The danger would lie in not knowing how to proceed once this mechanism had been overcome or closed down. Without some compensating or sustaining factor arriving on the scene, the state of no-self is no guarantee of ecstasy or bliss, because once the relatively peaceful effects have worn off, no-self can become — as I discovered in the Passageway — a very burdensome, if not a dire state of affairs.

But if I do not know how this reflexive mechanism of the mind can come to an end by any effort of our own, I do know it^can happen, because it happened to me. The journey began with the inability of the mind to make self an object, or when the ability to be self-conscious was no longer possible. The reflexive mechanism had ceased to function and thereafter left a subtle, almost physical feeling that some aspect of my mind was being "held." Whether this aspect was (and is now) being held back, held up, held down, or just held in a steady gaze upon the Unknown, I do not know. But whatever its reality, I know that the ability to make self an object was forever altered, cut off, or made immovable. Unknown to myself, at the time, the day this happened was the day the first step in a transition from ordinary consciousness to pure subjectivity had been made.

Before this event took place, I had never noticed how automatically and unconsciously the mind was aware of itself, or how continually conscious I had been of my own awareness in all mental processes, or in all my thoughts, words, and deeds. But when this reflexive movement came to an end, I suddenly realized the profound roots of self-consciousness, roots that unknowingly had infiltrated every aspect of my existence. To have this entire system uprooted, made for so many amazing discoveries as I moved through the ordinary affairs of life that I could never hope to recount them all. It would have been impossible to make these discoveries all at once, or to anticipate them in advance, because it was only when meeting with each of the many facets of living that I realized how new and different life had become. It took the most ordinary events and encounters to gradually bring this new life into focus and thus, enable me to become aware of the full extent of this alteration. During the journey, I called this gradual process of learning, the process of acclimation.

Having made this first step in the transition, it might be thought I was overwhelmed by the nothingness of no-self, but fortunately this was not the case. Initially I could give no thought to my own emptiness when I felt I had entered the mysterious flow of a greater life, wherein the experience of self and no-self were equally unimportant issues.

Furthermore, I discovered that when consciousness of the self is removed, "pure objectivity" seems^ to take over;

without the ability to look inward anymore, I looked outward upon empirical objects to see in them what I had never seen before. What I saw was how particular, singular, and individual objects dissolved into a great Unknown, an Unknown that was the same throughout all empirical variety and multiplicity. The only object that did not give way or reveal the unknown was the subject to this objective consciousness; for although the physical, empirical subject (personality) remained unchanged, there could not be found therein any true subject of consciousness — any seer of the Oneness into which all other objects emptied and became lost to the mind. Whatever observed this Oneness was not known to be identical with it, nor could it be localized anywhere within the empirical form; instead, that which saw this Oneness seemed to be above my forehead and outside anything I could call a self. Thus, the self I once knew was gone; and the self I never knew? Well, it would be difficult to miss something I never knew; but somewhere between the two, there remained the silence and stillness of no-self.

Although the known self had disappeared, an outsider might insist that logically, the self as the unknown subject remains. But if the only reason we can give for the existence of an unknown subject is the fact it is a logical and intellectual necessity, then our reasoning stands on shaky ground indeed. When a logical entity cannot be backed by a know-able, functional reality, the self-as-subject makes as much sense as the insistence that a man who has lost an arm, retains it. If the self cannot be seen, known, felt, or used, then what good is it? As a noun or pronoun "self" is a helpful word in an empirical world, but when used to designate anything absolute or permanent, the notion of self is not only unhelpful, it could be deceptive, and clinging to its purely logical existence, the great illusion of all time.

Here on the first step of the transition, the "logical subject" has evidently given way to a state of consciousness in which there is no known subject, and the one real object of consciousness remaining is the Oneness of all that exists. While this step ushers in a new way of knowing, it is not the way of knowing characteristic of pure subjectivity; to come upon this final seeing, two more steps are necessary. Before proceeding to these steps, however, I would like to attest to the great sense of wonder and beauty made possible by this first phase of the transition. To be free of the self and thereby enter the greater flow of life, means to see the Oneness of existence, its sacredness, and deathlessness, as well as this world's dynamic link with God in which all life is virtually an aspect of Himself. I often wondered why this state of affairs could not last forever, but I now see this was not the final step; it was only the first step into a new existence and a whole new way of knowing. It was just a beginning.

The second step (lasting about four months) was by far the most difficult period of my life, and of my own accord it was a step I would never have taken, not for all the promises in heaven. Though I cannot account for the exact mechanism that brings it about, it makes sense to say that without a knowable subject, we must soon be without a knowable object, since subject and object are functionally relational and not just logically so. Sooner or later the relation between a knowable object and an unknowable subject must fall apart when no relationship can possibly^be established. At the same time, it appears as if the emptiness of the empirical subject had finally caught up with, and engulfed, all empirical objects in its own nothingness. Thus, in the absence of a subject, the initial compensating factor of pure objectivity eventually gave way to reveal the absolute void of all objects to the mind.

This second step seems to be a state of consciousness in which there is neither subject nor object, and if any relationship persists between knower and known, it is the identity of absolute nothingness. This is a state of complete unknow-ing, wherein the usual methods of knowing have been cut off, and the only knowable thing remaining is an empty, meaningless, empirical reality. What is more, while in this state, there were times when I doubted if even consciousness remained because it too, had a curious way of disappearing and leaving nothing in its wake.

When this happened, or when ordinary consciousness gave way, the result was not unconsciousness — which I would have regarded as a blessing — rather, the remaining factor was the most rudimentary source of life I had ever come upon. It was an unknowable (unexperiential) life that seemed to remain unaffected and outside anything we ordinarily regard as life or consciousness. At seeing this, I felt I had never sunk so low, because it only brought home the fact that all my usual notions and experiences regarding life, death, and consciousness, had no reality whatsoever. This" that lay below the level of consciousness, this was true life. Had I been empirically dead, coming upon eternal life might have been a marvelous occasion, but as it stood, the situation was impossible; I could neither come nor go. But of one thing I was sure: this life was not my own.

Since there was no way out of this bind or state of unknowing, all I could do was stay with the ordinary empirical affairs of life which, out of necessity, was not hard to do since most of life is lived on this level anyway. I had been so conditioned that living normally, with little or no thought, was easily done, and for this I was most grateful. It was here I reaped the benefit of the years of preparation prior to taking the journey. Although they were years when I often felt nothing was happening, I was now grateful for the most ordinary activity and routine cares that filled my life because they enabled me to keep going and to maintain a steady keel in a most difficult time.

Though empty and meaningless, empirical reality was all that was left. It was the one sure thing there was, and for all I knew, it was all that remained in the absence of both a subject and object to consciousness. I should add here that it is a mistake to think that the sheer materiality of objects constitutes a valid object of consciousness. In this stage I learned the difference between mere conditioning that enables us to get around in our environment without accident or stress, and true objects to consciousness that have value, meaning, and depth of relationship; it was this latter content which was now a complete void to my mind.

Though all doors to knowing had been tightly closed, there remained nevertheless a way out — a way I would not have dreamt possible. Without any means of knowing what remains in the absence of subject and object, the burden of proof falls squarely on whatever it is that does remain, which means it can make itself known — it can reveal itself. There may be no guarantee this will happen, but I believe no one sets out on such a journey unless this revelation has been intended from the beginning. And it is this timely revelation that brings about the third and final step in the transition between two incompatible ways of knowing.

Evidently the revelation of what remains, knows its own time and will only appear when it cannot possibly be mistaken for something else, or when the ground has been so thoroughly prepared, no weeds can grow up to choke its truth or ever hide it again. Once the ground is cleared of all obstacles or objects of consciousness, that which remains comes in the dark like a single shaft of light casting no shadows — no doubt or error— and thus. it is seen as nothing ever seen before.

For me, this disclosure occurred in the simple empirical gesture of a smile whereby the smile itself, that which smiled, and that at which it smiled were known as identical. In the immediacy of this way of knowing, the three aspects of the One were clear. Yet, Oneness predominates because the eye, to see and know itself, looks neither within nor without — as if having a subject and object — nor does it look at anyone or any thing; indeed, it does not "look" at all. It has not revealed itself to another. Rather, its/revelation might be compared to the first manifestation of physical reality: when spirit, lying below the threshold of the known, first rose to the level of matter. When this occurred, there was no one around to witness or applaud such a feat, only the eye itself was present to rejoice in its own act, its own being, its own manifestation — thus, it revealed itself to no one and to no thing. 

I should add that it would be incorrect to compare this revelation to some newly discovered content suddenly rising from an unconscious to a conscious level. The eye seeing itself lies outside and beyond all conscious and unconscious content, which is why every notion and every last fragment of content had first to be cleared away before its identity could be revealed. In fact, the eye is not consciousness; what it is, I do not know, but that it is — that I know. And because it exists and knows itself as all that is, I call it pure subjectivity and not pure consciousness. It is only because the eye seeing itself is also a way of knowing that it is analogous to our notion of consciousness, but apart from this, it is a mistake to equate the two.

The reason pure subjectivity is so difficult to communicate is that any description or interpretation must be done on a subject-object, or relative, level of understanding, which is inadequate for this task. To be understood properly, it must be known in the immediacy of its own identity, since it cannot be understood as being either a subject or an object of the mind. I would also add: as long as the mind can even reflect on the eye seeing itself, so long will it be unable to see it.

Certainly my own descriptions have fallen short when speaking of pure subjectivity in terms of ordinary consciousness. But I have only done so because pure subjectivity, like ordinary consciousness, has both a subject and an object, even though by relative standards, its subject and object remain unknowable. The subject is not the self or the I, the object is not the other or the non-I; rather, the subject and object are two identical aspects of the One eye, which is not transcendent in itself, but only transcendent to our ordinary consciousness. Yet, behind the closed door of our understanding, pure subjectivity is actually the way by which everything in existence knows itself; lying below or behind all levels and forms of consciousness, it is that which knows itself as all that exists.

Another reason why pure subjectivity defies adequate description is that every account must be continually changing since the eye is not static; rather, it appears to open onto infinite possibilities in a movement of revelation that seemingly has no end. This movement is similar, perhaps, to our first glimpse of a forest that is revealed more fully as we approach its interior; so too, the eye expands, becomes more pervasive, and at the same time more concentrated and intense, as if drawing everything back into itself, into its own center.

How physical form can maintain itself against — or despite — the intensity of this movement, is a mystery, since form is ever on the brink of a glorious collapse. I find the mechanism for keeping everything from falling back into itself more awesome than even the outward thrust of creation. Though the movement of integration and disintegration (life and death) seems relatively slow, it is happening I think much faster than the mind can comprehend, for there seems to be no such thing as static maintenance.

Obviously, pure subjectivity is far more than a way of knowing, but what more this is, I do not know. Just coming upon it was the beginning of a new way of seeing and knowing for which the journey had been a necessary preparation. It's a simple kind of knowing, a type of knowledge-by-identity that is not extraordinary if we realize everything in the universe knows itself in this way, so why not man? That Christ came to save man — not the birds — from his "self" attests to our human deficiency in this matter. The cause of this deficiency is clear when we consider that of all we know to exist, only man has a self; only man feels lost because he cannot see. For this reason I tend to the viewihat man is on the bottom of the evolutionary heap (if such even exists), but I also see that his complexities have placed him in a unique position for a divine dispensation — as if God's own experiment had run amuck — and that despite his self, or possibly because of it, man will ultimately win out. But then, there is really no other way to go.

Recently, a friend told me that he could not stand the idea of God as pure subjectivity, because he found that people who believed this often became pompous frauds who paraded as God and went about seeking worshippers. I told him such behaviors could only arise from the failure to distinguish between the subjectivity of the self and the pure subjectivity of God. Anyone who says "I am God" could not have learned this distinction, because in the learning, the "I am" disappears and only "God" remains. Pure subjectivity is not the identity of self and God, but the identity of God alone who remains when there is no self. However, my friend assured me this was not the case. He said, those who claim to be God identify the subjectivity of the self with the subjectivity of God with no distinction in consciousness or way of knowing.

Since I did not encounter anything in this transition that could be called a self, I would be at a loss to explain how an identity between self and God (or self as God) could come about, or how a claim to personal deity could be made. I do not even hear Christ making such statements as "I am God." Always, he said everything came from the Father and not from his self.

For his part, my friend dismissed these claims of deification as belonging to the deranged mind, the religiously inflated ego, but offhand I could not do this. Instead, I feel open in these matters because I would very much like to know where, in this transition, it would have been possible to meet up with the self. For the moment, in the absence of an explanation, I can only conclude that no two people make the same journey, go through the same transition, or have the same experiences, even though in the end, the truth must be the same for all since the truth is not dependent upon anything but itself.

One suggestion, however, to help explain a claim for personal deification, would be that of mistaken identity, wherein the claimant, through some preconceived idea, understands his experience of God as the experience of his true self — or conversely, takes his self for God. It should be kept in mind that the variety of contemplative and religious experiences are so difficult to express and convey, there may be a tendency for the individual to plug his experiences into a ready-made frame of reference — an acceptable reference taken from those who have gone before. Thus, by inference or preconceived notion, pure subjectivity could be mistaken for the self when, in fact, the finding of the true self belongs to an entirely different journey.

Once again I would emphasize that the contemplative life is composed of two separate and entirely different movements: one of integration or the finding of the self; and one of disintegration or the losing of the self. In a religious context this would be, the movement toward union with God-as-object, followed by the second movement toward identity or God-as-subject. Of the two movements, it is far more likely that the movement toward union would culminate in experiences of personal deification, because further on, the experience of personal selfhood — on which personal deification depends — falls away. It is this very experience of no personal self and no personal God that composes the second movement. Thus, it does away with any possibility of a mistaken identity, especially when everything we thought we knew is taken away in a state of complete unknowing. Indeed, I find it difficult to see how anyone could emerge from this Passageway with any notions or preconceived ideas left intact!

What is more, the state of unknowing outlasts the Passageway and is, itself, the new way of knowing that never reverts back to the old way, for its displacement has been permanent and irreversible. There is no shifting back and forth between a relative and a non-relative way of knowing since the latter includes everything we ever need to know.

By the time the journey is over, the only possible way of living is in the now-moment, wherein the mind moves neither backward nor forward but remains fixed and fully concentrated in the present. Because of this, the mind is so open and clear that no preconceived notions can get a foothold; no idea can be carried over from one moment to another; much less, could any notion demand conformity from others. There are no more head-trips — no clinging to a frame of reference, even if it is only the reference of tomorrow's expectations. In a word, what is to be done or thought is always underfoot, with no need to step aside in order to find out what is to be thought, believed, or enacted.

In the now-moment the self never arises; nothing calls upon it do so. The eye seeing itself lives and holds everything tightly in this moment, a moment that has no need of a self. But even if we persist with the notion of self, such a label adds nothing to pure subjectivity. It tells us nothing more about it, and any clinging to self as a notion or an experience, certainly constitutes an obstacle to clear vision.

After stating these objections to my friend's notion of pure subjectivity — which I felt he had incorrectly understood — I asked him whether or not those who claim to be God, claim to be a part of the whole or the Whole itself? In his mood of humorous disgust for the entire notion, he went to dramatic lengths to assure me these drops of water claimed to be the whole of the sea, but could neither explain how the notion was derived, nor what experiences had given rise to such an assertion.

Here, I offered him my own understanding of the wholeness of God by comparing it to the drawing of a star, wherein the single points or extensions are its individual manifestations, but not its totality. For an individual manifestation to declare itself the star might be the partial truth, but not the whole truth. As the totality of all form. God is better visualized perhaps when the center of the star expands outward or retracts inward to form a single circle. Either way, however, I do not see how a single manifestation that has been dissolved (retracted or expanded) into the fullness of God can maintain itself in this human mode of existence. My own experiences tell me this cannot be done because there comes a point of no return, which is a point when the present form of life can no longer maintain itself against the tremendous, overwhelming force pulling back into itself.

The disintegration of personal selfhood is just the beginning of this dissolution — this homeward journey — and there is no point along the route at which anyone could say "now I am God" — it would make no sense. At the same time, there is no point at which we are not part of God, and it is this point which is clearly seen once the "I am" has dissolved. That which remains is discovered to be that which was there before the "I am" ever arose.

Despite this description, my friend insisted that the usual notion of pure subjectivity defined it as a type of God-consciousness that entailed a transition between ordinary self-consciousness, and a form of divine consciousness, in which one is aware of one's self as God. It means taking on God's own form of Self-consciousness — supposing, of course, that God 15 self-conscious — whereby the ordinary self disappears when this divine Self is revealed. There is no real identity here of subject and object because these are transcended — left behind —-and only the One remains.

Now I cannot question another man's experience; all I can do is be honest about my own. For two people to have different experiences that go by the same name is a common occurrence and certainly no cause for argument. My present concern for clarifying an understanding of pure subjectivity is to show how it is the keystone on which self either rises or falls. I was interested in what my friend had to say because, with his understanding of pure subjectivity, the self surely rises, rises to Godhood in fact; whereas in my view, the self — be it higher or lower, divine or otherwise — falls, disintegrates, and disappears forever. These are two different views of pure subjectivity, and since I have no experience to verify the rise of the self, I must leave this to others and move on to show how, for me, at least, there was no identification of self as God.

As I see it, the subject and object of pure subjectivity are not transcended. But to understand this, it is necessary to find out what, if possible, could be an object to the eye seeing itself that is not itself already. Unlike ordinary consciousness that knows an endless array of objects, pure subjectivity has but one object — namely, the subject. Thus it makes no difference where we look or what we do, whether we are asleep or shopping, engrossed in a book or adding up the bills, the object of the eye seeing itself (which is itself) is the same, day and night, moment by moment. This is no transient experience or game of now-you-see-it, now-you-don't; it is a new way of knowing not comparable to the subject-object method of ordinary consciousness.

To further account for this unusual subject and object, I must once more revert to the drawing of the star. Before its outline appeared (on paper) we did not know it existed; only the drawing enables us to know its form. But once it is drawn, the three aspects of the star become known. First, there is its unmanifested aspect before the drawing which, after the drawing, may be seen as its empty center. Second, there is the aspect of drawing itself, or the movement that made its form a visible reality. Third, there is the obvious and indisputable outline itself. Thus we have: the unmanifested or unknown; the act of manifesting; and the manifested or known. Applied to pure subjectivity, we can speak of these as the knower or subject, the knowing or mediator, and the known or object — all three existing, acting, and knowing as One. These three aspects are never transcended because they constitute the very essence of the One eye seeing itself. If I have not made it clear before, I should emphasize that empirical reality or physical form 15 the known aspect or object in pure subjectivity. But the way this object is known is not by the usual methods of knowing. To know the object inherent in pure subjectivity is also to know the subject, since there is no psychological or mental division such as usually enables us to know something "in particular" — as separate, unique, and individual. So, despite the visual discreteness of empirical objects, wherever the eye looks it sees only itself.

Before the journey, I could look out the window and see a tree as the object of my mind and perception. Today I look out the window and see, not only the visible, manifested aspect of pure subjectivity (the tree) but I also see its invisible, unmanifested aspect; and with such an emphasis on the latter, it is only with perceptual strain that I can focus on the former. In fact, I can no longer focus on visual form alone. Where once the manifested had been seen first, now it is seen second. This does not mean that the manifested is of lesser reality; it only means it is (or at least was, before this journey) a gateway. It is like the crust on a loaf of bread which is not separate from its more profound depths. In this way, the unmanifested is also the manifested; they are not separate realities, but only two aspects of the One truth. The seer of this reality is not myself, and what is seen is not merely a tree; rather, seer and seen are two aspects of the eye seeing itself, which I haye^lefined as pure subjectivity.

The object or manifested aspect of reality is ever changing, and therefore we say it is perishable. But in truth, nothing is perishable, because the unmanifested aspect (of any object) does not change even though it moves — constantly moves to manifest itself.

In my first glimpse of pure subjectivity, the gesture of the smile had these three aspects of knower, knowing, and known, that told me of a way of knowning that entailed no reflexive mechanism, had no need for objectification, and took no movement of the mind. There was nothing about this seeing (or pure subjectivity) that could either be called self-conscious or God-conscious, because the eye needed nothing within or without in order to know itself. The known is not an image or reflection of the knower; it is not an idea or an appearance in the knower's mind; and certainly it is not an illusion. Rather, the known (object) is the unknown (subject) as well as the knowing (mediator) which together form the trinitarian aspects of the One eye seeing itself. The eye has no need to be aware of itself because there is nothing that is not itself; thus, it has no reflexive mechanism and cannot be said to be self-conscious. What this means — to me at least — is that pure subjectivity lies outside and beyond all consciousness.

Nevertheless, because we find the same three aspects of seer, seeing, and seen, as features of all consciousness (though in a less pure form) we can easily make the mistake of equating two entirely different ways of knowing. It is a great error, I think, to identify pure subjectivity as any form of self-consciousness; even if these two ways of knowing appear intellectually and logically analogous, the fact remains that on an experiential level, they are totally incompatible. If this were not the case — if they were compatible, then no transition would be necessary. This journey then, is not a transition between self-consciousness and God-consciousness, nor did it culminate in any knowledge equating self and God.

At the end of the first movement, however, there is a type of God-consciousness wherein we are as much aware of the still-point at the center of our being as we are aware of ourselves; thus, we know we are part and parcel of God and a run-on with the Divine, but this type of consciousness still belongs to the self; it is not pure subjectivity. Strictly speaking then, the transition of the second movement may not be a transition in consciousness at all; though an obvious change in consciousness takes place, the major transition is the discovery of a new way of knowing and seeing that goes beyond anything we call consciousness, and certainly beyond anything we could call "self."

Unless pure subjectivity is known as an immediate experience, there may be no way to understand it. Even after it is experienced, it may still not be adequately understood;

and in my case, even when it had been both experienced and understood, it was still not easy to accept. The reason for this difficulty was because God-as-object died hard, so hard in fact, it was not entirely dead after both knowing and experiencing that as an object. God was no longer available.

It was the disintegration of God-as-object, not the disappearance of the self, that proved to be the most difficult and bewildering aspect of the journey. While the self had become nothing but a stillness and silence within, the automatic mental or psychological movement of my mind to focus on God as an object went right on, and toward the end of the journey became, a peculiar type of problem. It seems that trying to make God an object was the last and final unconscious movement of my mind to be put to rest. As an object. God was an unquestioned certitude, an immediate knowledge like the most basic fact of life. As said before, I knew God as well as I knew myself — which doesn't say much, but at least it says something.

Prior to the journey. God had not been an object in the sense of being completely "other" to myself. I looked upon Him as part and parcel of my-true self, the completion of my wholeness as an individual and the very core of my being. In this way God was an aspect of my own subjectivity, but an aspect I could still focus on, or sink to, by an interior movement of love, or whatever faculty it was that enabled me to be aware of God as the still-point within. It was as if God were half-subject half-object, and in this union I felt most secure. It was a knowledge and security born of the first movement and sustained for over twenty years, or until this journey — the second movement — began.

In the years between those two movements I sometimes had experiences in which the line of separation between self and God seemed to disappear, and though I searched myself, could not come upon any clear knowledge or certitude regarding what was His and what was mine. This was not so much the experience of loss of self as the loss of a clear-cut line of demarcation. At first these experiences were few and far between, but later they grew closer together, until it became a cause for concern when I seemed to come to a permanent and quite natural state in which a division between self and God was no longer apparent. Once the line of separation disappears there is no "other," there is no self, and though life went on as usual, I had no certitude of who was living it — God or myself. To be lost and dissolved in God was highly desirable, but to be lost and dissolved in nothing knowable — as is God-as-subject — was not, in my opinion, the way things should go.

Looking back from my present perspective, I now see what I failed to see at the time: with the loss of self there is also a loss of God-as-object. These two, self and God-as-object, are so intimately bound together we cannot possibly lose one without losing the other; yet, this never dawned on me until after both losses had become an accomplished fact.

But before this happened, I did not cling to my self in the need for individual autonomy, since I knew I was totally dependent upon God anyway. What I clung to was the line of separation, because it is only a sense of separation that makes it possible for God to be an object to the self. Since I had always taken this division for granted, I was all the more amazed and disconcerted when it (the line, so to speak) disappeared. Those who would tell us that God is all that remains when the division between God and self is no longer apparent, may be speaking prematurely, because on an experiential level. God is not what we think He is or will be. When first seen. He may not be recognized or known at all. Thus, finding out what remains in the absence of self is the pearl of great price, a long journey, a change of consciousness, and the beginning of a new life.

Even at the end of the journey, and with my first glimpses of pure subjectivity, I thought that although God-as-subject was, without a doubt, the highest truth ever encountered, its seeing and knowledge brought about less human satisfaction than knowing God-as-object. As an object, God is hard to beat. He is the object of our love, our will, and our desires; with or without an image, he is the object of our minds and feelings; he is the object we see in others and in all of nature; he is our constant companion and other half; he is the one we look for in every relationship. And having seen this object all my life, it seemed terrible and unnecessary for God to do away with such a consoling and meaningful factor in human existence. I could never have done away with God-as-object because I could never have stopped my faculties from looking for this — their true object.

Consequently, I regarded pure subjectivity as a passing foretaste of the way God would be known after death, and tried to put it aside as not belonging to a permanent way of knowing in the here and now. But what I went on to discover was that God-as-subject could not be put aside anymore than God-as-object could be made to take its place. This then, was the peculiar dilemma I encountered at the end of the journey: the dilemma of being subtly cornered between two ways of knowing in which the choice was not mine to make.

It took many overwhelming and lasting experiences of pure subjectivity to finally realize its total relevance in the here and now. The initial experiences were a combination of possession, revelation, and seeing in which there was no one to be possessed, nothing for it to be revealed to, and the seeing was only a seeing of itself. It was like the stealthy obliteration of everything but the consciousness of Itself. In the last chapter I described such an experience and was mistaken to think it a passing infusion, because it turned out that what had initially been so awesome and unbelievable, gradually became a continuous clear reality. Somehow, it seemed necessary to see again and again how pure subjectivity was, itself, the now-moment, the continuous wakeful-ness, the concentrated wholeness, the intensity, and the great abiding certitude all of which adds up to an experiential understanding of how pure subjectivity works.

Then finally, after many months, the day came when that subtle movement — or whatever it was that persistently searched for God-as-object — disappeared, and God-as-subject came into its own. I might add, this was also the day I saw how Christ was all form, which somehow seemed responsible for putting a blessed, irrevocable end to the mind's automatic search for an object. Thereafter the mind never made the slightest movement to "look," and in this way, learned to live fully in the now-moment. All this took time, however, but then time seems to be of Its essence because God must have some measure for the events in a woman's life.

Realizing that this transition from God-as-object to God-as-subject will not be understood by everyone, I cannot leave this discussion without affirming my conviction that when it comes to living a good life, being a good person, or establishing a deep relationship with God, this transition is not really necessary. As a subject or as an object, God is God, and the only thing that changes in this transition is the way of knowing Him. God of the woods, the still-point and silence within, known or unknown, subject or object, it is all God, and life is just a movement toward a clearer vision. Naturally I do not know if everyone must eventually make this transition, but I would think it easier to make after death or without the interference of so many psychological and intellectual habits that tend to impede this journey in the here and now.

As I hope I have shown, empirical reality is not itself an obstacle to seeing; rather, it is what we think about this reality that creates an obstacle to a transition that otherwise might not have been necessary in the first place. As it stands now, I still have a number of problems due to the continual need to compromise. I am surrounded by people with whom I need to relate; I live amid values, ideas, and opinions on which I must express myself; and because of this environment, I am continually impressed with the difficulty of sharing a journey with others who do not see as I now see. Yet this very inability, this abiding difficulty, only brings home to me the more how incomplete life is and ever will be until everyone can see.