As the Impersonal, one experiences oneself as a vast, dark, silent, emptiness. It is a sheer emptiness, boundless, infinite and absolutely silent. One experiences oneself as an emptiness that has no characteristic except that of being a totally silent Impersonal Witness. There is a stupendous vastness, an absolute silence, a complete impersonality, and a singularly clear but absolutely uninvolved awareness of everything. One is merely a witness, a silent and unchanging witness.

I am not the body, not the personality, not the mind, not the Essence, not even God. I am nothing that is a content of experience or awareness. But all experience happens within me. Everything, at all levels, from the physical to the spiritual, all happens within me. I see the personal life as a drama that I am not involved in. It is like a movie that has a beginning and an end. But I am untouched and untouchable by any of it. I am beyond anything and everything—the person, and his whole universe. I am the Beyond, absolutely transcendent. I am a silent witness, that contains all there is. I am unchanging. I am the deathless, the unborn, the uncaused. I was never born, will never die. I have no beginning and no end, but all beginnings and all ends are within me. The concepts of life and death do not apply to me. I do not need to be freed or enlightened. I am always free, always have been, and will always be free. I see life and death as nothing but a process of constant transformation happening within me. All existence, from the lowest to the highest, is always in a state of flux, but I am the unchanging witness, where all transformation and change happen. I am the background against which this flux is seen. I am static, unchanging, unreacting, unresponsive, but singularly and purely aware. I am beyond time and space. I am beyond timelessness and spacelessness. All time is a movement within me. I see it as the movement of the timeless within the immensity that is me. This movement creates time, which is the axis of personal history. But all of personal history, all of time, and all of space is a time-space continuum that is a small and insignificant thing within me. I see mind, the totality of it, as a small process, like a little storm, within me. It is always busy with itself, trying to grasp me. But how can it grasp what transcends it absolutely! Time and mind are not contrary to me, are not a disturbance in my silence. They are little happenings within my vastness. I am beyond, but contain, all time, space, and mind.

This realization brings a new clarity and understanding to one's personal life. It makes it possible to see the role one is identifying with in one's life, and to know one's function, work and unique contribution in one's personal life. One can see how some characteristics or skills are developed in one's life, for some unique role or purpose. Here one understands the role of conditioning, as a tool towards the development of personal characteristics and skills needed to actualize a certain role, to facilitate a particular contribution. One here understands one's personal maturation as a unique development exemplified in the Personal Essence. This development is a unique manifestation in the Impersonal background. One knows one's unique, real function or work, as a specific contribution to the totality of life. One's personal realization, including one's real personal life and work, become seen as a unique manifestation of the Real, which is the same as one's unique contribution to the universe. This is a direct insight, not the result of a thought process.

The dimensions of both the Impersonal Witness and the Cosmic Consciousness, although nonpersonal and formless, are still differentiated aspects of Being. All the essential aspects we have discussed so far are differentiated, discernible Platonic forms. Love is definitely love, completely delineated, as are Will, Compassion and so on. The Impersonal Witness is singularly impersonal. The Cosmic Presence is very clearly a consciousness that is boundless love, a loving conscious light. The realization of the various differentiated aspects of Being leaves the door open to the manifestation of pure Being, nondifferentiated presence. Manifestation and realization of this basic and supreme aspect is a long and difficult one, but it is a natural process that spontaneously occurs at some point of personal development.