Our potential is infinite, inexhaustible; hence there is always realization after any realization. You'll have all kinds of experiences, states, and conditions that may feel like an ultimate state of realization, but then that too keeps changing. In my understanding, the truest state of realization is that in which whenever you realize something, no matter what it is, you go beyond it. The moment you say this is it, you will get stuck with a concept, and tomorrow there will be something else. So the true state of realization is more of a lack of attachment to realization.

Realization, in other words, is the movement from necessary awakening to primary awakening. It means not only realizing that true nature is what we are but also living that realization in our expressions and communication, in our actions and life. We can come to realize that true nature is what lives, is what communicates. So in realization, the center of gravity moves from the ego self to true nature itself. And here true nature can assume any form or manifestation—bounded, boundless, or even something other than that dichotomy. We recognize in realization that we are not the usual self, the ordinary self, or what is sometimes called the small self or the ego self.

This radically changes our view and understanding of realization. You are just as realized if you realize personal presence as you are if you realize the absolute emptiness of reality. Realizing pure presence is as significant as realizing love. Realizing personal will is as profound as realizing the essence of intelligence. Although seeing manifestations of true nature as hierarchical is easier for the human mind, once we experience the truth of nonhierarchy, reality opens in unimaginable ways. Nonhierarchy is definitely more difficult to understand and to experience, but it also carries the possibility of greater freedom. It not only allows us to feel the personal freedom of enlightenment, but it also frees enlightenment itself to discover further kinds of enlightenment.

So, which one is it? Is it you practicing and attaining realization or is it Living Being practicing and attaining realization? As you see, they are two sides of the same thing or, more precisely, one thing seen from two views. The individual needs to practice and, at some point, also needs to recognize that when he is practicing, it is living reality—Living Being—practicing, it is living reality applying its intelligence. Living reality is actually what manifests the individual soul. Living reality is what develops the individual soul, what ripens the individual soul. And it is what opens the individual soul to recognize its own realization. By opening the individual soul to recognize realization, Living Being lives its enlightenment consciously, with full awareness. It is your realization and it is not your realization. It is not your realization because it is the realization of Living Being. It is your realization because you are practicing and it is your experience, not someone else’s. But you cannot own it or appropriate it. If you do, you disconnect yourself from the grace that gives you the capacity to practice. This appears as a paradox when you are standing on one end or the other—on the end of the individual or the end of Living Being. But the individual and living reality are two sides of one thing. So the practice moves from being practice that is self-centered and externally motivated, to practice with selfless motivation, to practice without any motivation at all. When you practice without any motivation, you naturally practice when living authentically and when engaging specific formal practices, and you come to recognize that it is not your realization. This is a very subtle and delicate recognition. You do need to acknowledge that it is your realization and, at the same time, you cannot appropriate that realization as the individual self.

Yet, from the realized point of view, all experiences, including the physical, are just waves in the ocean. From our limited view, spiritual experiences are miracles that come from some other, invisible dimension, but when we know the ocean—when we know reality directly and fully—we see how much more fundamentally real it is. This exposes the flimsiness of the ideas we have and reveals the truth that the individual consciousness is actually a personal expression of a vast ocean of reality. But to the person who is truncated from her essential ground, it seems like a miracle: “Oh, I had this opening . . . this amazing presence of light came, and I felt so wonderful . . .” We believe that it was an unusual event, that it was something other than what we are. The wave can awaken to her wateriness and the source of her existence in a more complete way. Experiencing the light is one thing. To awaken to it and recognize it as true, and to know it as one’s nature, is quite another. When the wave knows that the ocean is the source, this is realization. When the wave feels the ocean and experiences the wetness without knowing it and recognizing it, this is a spiritual experience that remains unexplainable, unknown, and unrealized. It is still part of the dream. It is not yet an awakening.

Every realized human being continues to work on inner development. There is no end to the development and unfolding of Essence. This development proceeds by exposing more and more, perhaps in time very subtle aspects of the personality.

Our human tendency to regard whatever realization we are experiencing as the ultimate truth is natural. And many spiritual teachers and practitioners take their particular awakening to be the final one. As I said, many traditions posit different final states ranging from Brahman, Tao, and Dharmakaya to Divine Essence, the Godhead, and Shiva. When we know these states experientially, we find that they are not simply different names for the same realization; each is unique even though there are commonalities. In this teaching, we encounter many different kinds of realization—some of them similar to those posited by other traditions—and we consider them all different faces of one truth. We see these different realizations as equal, even though other teachings might posit one or another of them as the ultimate and true liberation. And, of course, we don’t have any beef with that. We also see that each one of these realizations is true liberation.

When we recognize and learn about this unstoppable activation, when our being is finally liberated and our consciousness freed, we see that living our realization means something entirely different from what we thought. In the beginning stages of awakening, living our realization has mostly to do with how we can bring the qualities and dimensions of being into our life, with how we can bring the features of our awakened condition to everyday life situations. But from the perspective of essential activation, living our realization is not a matter of bringing our particular mode of realization into our life or of integrating our life into it. It is more that realization itself can’t help but continue to live however it wants. Living realization means that realization continues to live, continues to grow and develop, and what realization is continues to change—it reveals new meanings and new content. The life of realization is runaway realization—realization realizing further realization.

As we work with these and other nondual realizations in the first and second turnings of this teaching, it is important to learn each one of them and to establish them. To establish a particular realization or awakening or dimension basically means to be free from the obstacles that hinder our being in that condition and to integrate the support of true nature for that condition of realization. We don’t establish realization by thinking about it, concentrating on it, or doing practices that always evoke it. Our work is more about seeing the obstacles to realization, making them transparent by recognizing and understanding each one of them. And because the individual consciousness does not have the inner support to allow itself to be present in a way that can recognize realization for what it is, we also work to integrate the support for the realization. So establishing a realization or a dimension of awakening means that it becomes a station, it becomes permanently available to us.

We can also see that the full realization of any condition, such as presence or love or awareness—if it is complete and if we do not take the position that that is where we need to be—naturally moves on to another realization because of the inherent dynamism of true nature. So even though nothing else needs to happen, it can happen. And frequently, realization moves to further realization by revealing another facet of the self that hasn’t yet been recognized or by revealing our delusions or fixed ideas about reality. This might leave us wondering, “What does it mean for realization to be complete when it can move to another realization?” When I say that a realization can be complete, I mean that our experience and recognition and understanding of that one facet of reality is full and thoroughgoing; I don’t mean that it is complete in the sense that it is final and it is all there is to know about reality.

When the Absolute is realized, is really established, you can see the whole Universe emerge again, but emerge in a more real, more living, more organic way. The mind comes back, but comes back in true thinking. For the first time you understand what thinking is. The thinking, the mind that we thought was a problem for spiritual realization, which it was, is now redeemed and functions in a real way. We realize that there is true thinking, liberated mentation, where the thoughts themselves are an expression of love and peace and harmony. Then there is true feeling. There is true action. True thought. All redeemed.