“The presence of awareness is the awareness of that presence.”

In spiritual terms, the presence of my being relates to that direct, unprompted, and instantaneous awareness that exists before thoughts and identity. It is the feeling of ‘I am That’ which is not dependent upon name, gender, body, mind, or how you perceive. This ability of the Absolute Energy that the mind receives is eternal, timeless, changeless, limitless, and impersonal.

The presence of your true self settles in the superconscious section of your mind, which we call the soul, where no thoughts prevail. It is that spirit playing the role of witness, the soul as the witness-er, to observe, check, and guide the perceptive mind. The divine presence makes the mind first aware, enabling it to be conscious of all it perceives and conceives. When you observe inward, the soul awakens, and the mind, in stillness, becomes spontaneously aware, permitting the soul to witness what the mind perceives, making it alive to perceive its thoughts.

Now, in material terms, however successful or knowledgeable you may be. Whatever wealth you may possess. A day shall come when you will need to know the presence of this being-ness, surrounded by the glitter and the illusions of your worldly fortunes. You will never be complete with peace of mind until you realise the undeniable presence, the living web from which everything unfolds.

There is a difference between the presence of mind and the presence of your being. In the former, the mind belongs to you, an electrochemical computer connected through a neural network within an electromagnetic field. The sensory organs transmit data to the mind on which they act. The mind requires time to comprehend, analyse, process, reason, choose, and infer, assisted by memory. Like the RAM in a computer, the present slips away, and the mind keeps revolving around the past and the future.

The spirit, through the soul, controls your mind via innate intelligence, which we refer to as awareness. This spiritual energy is spontaneous and unaffected by social or environmental conditioning, past data, or beliefs. The difference here is that the presence of your mind spontaneously creates vibrations in the body and its environment after the presence of awareness triggers the mind.

Therefore, the spirit in your body is identifiable as the presence of awareness in making your mind aware. In this manner, the mind, having become aware, becomes conscious of experiencing what the sensory organs perceive. This spiritual awareness is before everything your mind can perceive, and is also aware of your mind. The presence of this being-ness determines the ingredient of ‘who’ you are, not the body and mind, which you often mistake and think yourself to be.

Existence in space reflects your beliefs and self-identity, encompassing both body and mind. Presence is the nature of our being in the present, where spontaneous awareness becomes alive, occurring in alert watchfulness to welcome what is unknown. It has no expectation or interpretation; it just exists. There is no analysis, judgement, choice, or decision. It is effortless, exists in purity, and is present everywhere. This presence occurs when the Absolute Energy manifests within the mind to turn into awareness.

Presence is distinct from the present or the current moment. To be precise, I am that presence with everything around me, the awareness of which makes the presence reveal its reality. Therefore, I am the presence in awareness, and awareness is the presence of the actual ‘who I am.’ It is the presence of everything, which comprises the absolute, that the mind separates into relative in duality by thinking in opposites to choose and infer its likes and dislikes.

It means existence would not be possible if this awareness of the presence were nonexistent. Without awareness, there would be no knowing of presence, and existence would have no meaning. It is like a mountain existing without anyone able to perceive it, implying that awareness is a precondition for us to know of anything that exists. Advaita Vedanta’s non-dualistic approach elaborates on these phenomenological perspectives.

Awareness is the source of knowing all that exists in this universe, and this supreme ability of energy is called Absolute Energy. It reveals that the manifest and the unmanifest are the same. The seen and the unseen are the same. The subject and the object are the same since the object is only a part of any subject. Absolute Energy is the substratum of all that exists, where the body is the object and awareness is the subject. From the absolute, we have parts of the same, temporarily separating into the past, present, and future, yet remaining an undivided absolute whole as nothing.

Absoluteness remains in all three, as the substrate presence is the same; it can only be separated. The mind can function only about something, separating the subject into parts, forming duality, and existing in opposites. The energy in total absoluteness can be experienced by the human mind only in spontaneity when the mind is still in silence.

There is no birth or death in the awareness of your presence. You are the presence of that awareness, the way it is in the eternal now. All separations for self-preservation in body and mind, with an individual identity, living in the past and future, memory and consciousness, expectations, and analysis disappear.

In the awareness of your presence, your individuality is a certain death. There is only the spontaneity of the now. It is the link between the world of separation and liberation. The moment these two connect, you become aware. It is that light which unites the apparent to the real. Through the awareness of your presence, you open the door to oneness and discover who you are. Presence reveals that you, as aware energy in body and mind, do not choose or do anything; you only witness and oversee while living the process we call life.

Whatever notions you might have about individuality, free will, choice, or the power of self-decision exist apparently in illusions. The mind responds by reacting to the conditioned reflexes of the subconscious mind and its associated memories. Then, there are social obligations, environmental factors, and various belief systems that we collectively refer to as faith. The only way out is to awaken from such illusions in the presence of awareness and obtain self-knowledge of ‘who and what’ we are. Until you rediscover yourself, your mind shall wander in these illusions of ‘me, mine, and myself,’ irrespective of your spiritual knowledge.

The ultimate reality is the presence of awareness and awareness of that presence—the only eternal and ultimate reality. You need not go within or without; you, as a separate identity with a name and gender, must disappear in that absolute nothingness of the universe. The presence of awareness will reveal that you are none other than God. The absoluteness or the presence within certifies that the mind takes you into the world, and the silence brings you nearer, towards that completeness, which you are.

NAMASTE