The Science of the Self

Anyone who enters the arena of conscious evolution must make the effort to acquaint themselves with the territory. What is the territory? The territory is consciousness. The territory is your own self. There are different levels or dimensions to who you are, and you need to understand and be able to distinguish between them very clearly if you are serious in your aspiration to evolve. It's hard to overemphasize how challenging this is. In all but the rarest among us, the experience of consciousness or subjectivity is so close to the self-sense that it is almost impossible to objectify it enough to make these important distinctions. In the unenlightened state, we are so identified with the quality and content of whatever our subjective experience happens to be from moment to moment that it is difficult for us to recognize which dimension of our own self we are abiding in. So if we are interested in enlightenment, we need to cultivate a profoundly objective interest in the science of the self, rather than always being lost in the subjective drama of our ever-changing inner experience.

Andrew Cohen