Spiritual Enlightenment: Awakening to the Supreme Reality. Dr. Robert Puff

riding a car or going on vacation. The experience of these events is the same. Even though the events and my interpretations of them have changed, the experience of the events has remained the same.

      A way in which to explore this is to glance through photo albums; look through pictures or mementos that jar your memory of the past. While you do this, remember the events but see that who remembers and witnesses the events is always the same. Although events change, there is always a sense of “I am.” Even when we are dreaming, there is an essential, ultimate part of ourselves that witnesses the dream. “I am” remains the same, whether in a dream, a memory or a situation that is happening right here and now.

      Allow yourself to experience the pure bliss of everything being complete and whole, right here and right now. You can do this by not trying to fight life or suffering. If you can flow with life, then the suffering will disappear. You will understand that life is perfect and realize that pain and pleasure will pass but what remains the same is the witnessing of them. When pleasure or pain comes, we should not try to hold onto them or be defined by them. If we do, that in itself will cause suffering. Instead, flow with life and realize that all is well. The mind can’t achieve this state, but if you let go and just be, life becomes beautiful. In that state, you will see that even suffering can possess beauty. Flow with life and truly, all will be well.

      Chapter 4

      Cause and Effect: Suspending Time to Achieve Beingness

      What causes things to be the universe, us, everything that is? Time and space play a huge role in causation. Physics, Einstein and scientists around the world have concluded that we live in a space-time continuum.

      The only way we’re able to conceive of this, however, is in the mind. The universe in which we live is a conceptual one; it can only be envisaged. Without the implementation and cognition of thinking, the universe as we know it wouldn’t exist. Although we might think that everything simply is and we discovered it, we forget that rather we have interpreted it through our mind first. Without our conceptualizing it, there would just be awareness, presentness, but no sense of causation.

      Causation is created via the space-time continuum. Without that concept there really is no causation possible. In a sense, everything is connected but the universe in and of itself is infinite in its possibilities. The universe contributes to even the smallest cause. This goes back to how our minds create the sense of the universe’s relationship to causes.

      We can look into this a little further. I remember once hearing a story from a scientist who talked about how the asteroid that struck the earth about 65 million years ago, which ended the rein of the dinosaurs, could have been off course, hitting another planet like Jupiter or the sun (where most asteroids and meteorites crash), and that it wouldn’t have hit Earth if it had been off track even the slightest – I mean, such a small percentage it was almost comical. The chance of that one meteorite hitting our Earth was extremely small, yet that’s exactly what happened.

      Everything in the universe – everything – is connected by causation. Since everything is tied together, nothing can really happen unless the entire universe conspires to agree to let that happen. There’s a saying I love: “If I pull a blade of grass, the entire universe shakes.” This statement shows how everything in the universe is interconnected and one cause has a ripple effect on all other causes.

      It’s kind of funny because people work so hard at making things happen. If only they realized that unless the universe conspires to let that thing happen, nothing in their power can create it to happen. Likewise, if something’s going to happen, there is nothing you can do to stop it.

      But that doesn’t render you powerless. When you suspend past and future (the time continuum) what you’re left with is no more cause and effect. This is what you find in the timelessness of now, if you can forget about the past and the future and just be aware of the present. Without time, there can’t be cause and effect, so what happens is that infinite possibilities emerge. Creative spontaneity, not knowing what’s going to happen, being present without any sense of prediction, and “just being” are all things that can occur.

      Being present in the here and now becomes infinite in its possibilities, infinite in its beauty. The real universe, the ultimate supreme universe, is beyond our mind’s ability to grasp. Our mind categorizes things into desires, and these desires are split between pleasure and pain. Our mind likes certain things so we pursue them and grasp at them. On the other hand, when painful events occur our mind pushes them away and tries to keep them as far away as possible. But by the mind doing this, we miss out on the true reality of what is. Beingness right here, right now, with no space. Just “is-ness.” Just “beingness.” The constraints and the causation of everything suddenly vanish and we’re left with truly infinite possibilities of what is.

      Those constraints the mind has created are limited and full of contradictions. For instance, we want health, yet we overeat. We want love, yet because of our fears we push people away. In beingness, in present awareness, infinite possibilities present themselves without pain and suffering, because we don’t conceptualize or categorize anymore. Those constraints are taken away and we can enter a world truly beyond our imagination.

      Everything that we experience has countless factors that have contributed to its potential right now. But before that, beyond that which holds up our entire universe as we know it in our mind, is the supreme or ultimate reality. This is who we truly are. This is our true self. If we identify with our supreme self, then we see that everything the mind creates is created out of ourselves, our supreme and true self. If we realize there really is no cause, we see that there just is.

      What happens then is that our minds relax. We suspend desires, fears and attachments. We start living in the here and now. We discover that when we live in the moment, all is well, all is beautiful, and ultimately there are truly no words for it. It just is.

      Chapter 5

      Awakening Your True Self: The Power of Awareness

      In this life, the most permanent thing we experience is witnessing awareness. It begins when we are born and it goes away when we die. But beyond this witnessing, beyond the most permanent thing that is part of our life, is that which truly is.

      That which we ultimately are cannot be described, yet it is a foundation of everything that is, will be or has ever been. What we experience is witnessing, but the knower and the known arise out of our ultimate true self. It’s similar to when we are asleep. We may not be aware of it, but after we wake up we are aware that we were asleep.

      Another example is being in a dark cave. I love caves and can remember once being in a cave when the lights were turned off and everything was completely black, as black and as dark as possible. There was absolutely no light but that didn’t mean that seeing wasn’t occurring or that seeing wasn’t possible.

      This is a good analogy for what we are discussing about witnessing because we can see before seeing and hear before hearing. There is something that is before time – it is that which we truly are. It is beyond all concepts and reality, but it is what we are.

      When death occurs to a particular body, what appears to have unity and integrity breaks down. It begins to tear apart. What we identify with at birth also fades with the body at death. Though apparent life continues, in order for it to be known, another body, another entity, another consciousness needs to be created. What this ultimately means is that without the knower, there’s nothing that can be known.

      The ultimate, that which we are, continues to create everything that exists out of the nothingness. But it is a creation – it is not what we really are at our core. It’s not our true self; it’s rather our false self. We identify with it to the point where we might forget who we are or we forget that we are that from which everything originates. We are the ultimate truth, the ultimate reality, out of which the entire universe is constantly being created.

      Sometimes I compare it to a water droplet that feels separate from the vast ocean. We adopt an identity as a water droplet but when we die, though that water droplet still moves on, has always been and will