Moderator: A viewer in the United Kingdom, Manchester. How can I move from oneness to self-realization?
David: You never from oneness, Oneness is self-realization. If by oneness, though, you mean a episodic or temporary state of self-realization, then the path from there to full self-realization is just a question of extending your meditation, this meditation upon yourself, in other words by prolonging and engaging your process that has already begun and is already successful as you go along. You continue to engage your process and let it unfold whether that process is due to meditating or self inquiry or devotional practices or japa or any of the many spiritual practices that are discussed in spiritual literature. Some people even might pray as a spiritual practice. There are many different forms of moving on this path.
So if by oneness, you mean that state where there is no duality, then that essentially is the state of self realization. The key to practice, so to speak, not with effort but with innocence. Continue to lean in that direction. Do whatever you have to do or don’t do whatever you don’t have to do to abide in that oneness. And the longer you abide the deeper it sticks in the mind.
At some point the mind will merge into that oneness. It will merge in to the unconditioned. Your mind will be “That”. Your mind will be Being itself, it will be the Absolute. One day you will wake up and realize your mind, what you once thought of as your individual mind, will move in to the immeasurable. It will be a “run on” situation. One the one hand, its individual, your mind is, on the other hand it moves into the Vastness, both at the same time. So mind is both personal and impersonal. Thinking makes it personal. The contents in the mind, when thinking happens, makes it personal or individual or finite. When you go beyond thinking it runs into the silence that has no beginning and no end that is perfect clarity it is the clear light of consciousness itself.
