The first paragraph here is a good example of what Maharishi meant by "Knowledge is structured in consciousness."
---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, <anartaxius@...> wrote : While alive, everybody has experience, consciousness. So 'something' is making the content of experience visible. There is always a 'witness'. The mind's interpretation of what this so-called witness is changes with practice (whichever one or ones are being used). The 24/7 kind of inner witnessing is one of those stages of change that many experience. My experience is that it basically evaporated, almost like it became a mist and soaked into the world of outer experience as if the outer world was a sponge and just vanished, that is, the so-called witness becomes identical with all other experience, with thought, objects, and action. So one cannot say 'I' am witnessing. At this point witnessing has no centre, no location, it is no longer like a receiver of experience, like an homunculus, like a little man in your head watching stuff. Descriptions and models of consciousness completely break down at this point, they are of no use because it is not possible to formulate a model that includes everything; the only thing that makes it intelligible in some way is the experience itself. What is especially intriguing is the actual experience is no different from the way it was prior to starting spiritual life, nothing is changed. This is why some teachers say one is already enlightened. It is almost as if the spiritual path is an aberration you have to grow out of to gain fulfilment; you think it is going to somehow save you and make things better, but it is just part of the dream you are trying to wake up from. Except you were already awake from the beginning. So in this sense enlightenment really does not exist. The Zen phrase 'selling water by the river' is actually pretty much how the whole thing comes down. Models are just navigation points, and roughed out approximations. People's experiences as they grow have wide variations that never seem to fit that well into the models, except perhaps for a few. So evaluating others' experiences on the basis of their conformity to a particular model has a wide possibility of error. The goal is to get people to have this experience of totality, not to berate them for their lack of conformance to a model as one is interpreting it. The spiritual path reeks with smugness, and none of us are immune.
