How the Universal Witness Transforms Our Experience of the World
“‘The Real World’ is a captivating chapter from Luminous Night’s Journey: An Autobiographical Fragment, a collection of A. H. Almaas’s earliest writings that have helped to deepen the world’s spiritual knowledge. One of the most compelling pieces in this collection delves into the transformative concept of the ‘Universal Witness.’ This term, central to Almaas’s teachings, offers a profound lens through which we can re-examine our understanding of Being, the world, and our place. Here, Almaas explores the role of the Universal Witness in spiritual realization. And how the Universal Witness is a pivotal point of convergence between the individual soul and the boundless universe. Here is a glimpse of Universal Witness through the eyes of someone on the front lines of spiritual transformation.
The Real World
The day breaks through me.
I am a window in the universe
For the nameless reality.
Almaas describes how his passionate love for truth activates Being’s creative dynamism, revealing its boundless dimensions. Though the process exposes conflicts, these become opportunities for further revelations as ignorance is dispelled.
He contemplates the relationship between the universal witness, the individual soul, and the manifest world. Though he realizes the world appears as a dream in the vast emptiness of the witness, he intuits the individual soul and world have a truer substantial existence. Subtle hints point to a real world beyond the veil of mind.
The dynamism of Being accelerates, disclosing the underlying nature of reality as love, the authentic body of the universe. Presence is revealed as the ground of all differentiation. Concepts are seen to unfold within presence, which is realized as simultaneously fullness and emptiness.
Being unveils nonconceptual clarity as the truth of the world. Particular forms are recognized as luminous designs inseparable from Being’s total freshness. No longer obscuring, forms become infinite windows into Being’s clear nature.
A representative experience illustrates this. Almaas sees everything as profoundly mysterious and unknown. Assumptions about knowing objects through concepts are peeled away. A chair is beheld beyond words, memories, and information – a complete mystery. This ignites insights annihilating complacency about worldly knowledge.
Surfaces become transparent, revealing a naked luminous reality. The opaqueness of mind veils this, solidifying the world. Forms now appear as beautiful transparent designs carving the one infinite crystalline presence. The world manifests and reveals, no longer obscures, the sheer clarity of Being.
Almaas realizes accepting conceptual knowledge veils the real world. Passionately embracing the dynamism of Being reveals reality’s boundless truths. Luminous Night’s Journey inspires readers to question assumptions and inquire within to unveil timeless nonconceptual awareness.
- How is the universal witness connected to the world?
- What is the real world?
- How is the individual soul related to the real world?
- What connects the individual soul to the silent witness?
