b ei ng awa re of bein g awa re

i ntroduc tio n
t h e i nt uiti on of ha ppi nes s

E
verybody loves happiness above all else. Even if we
deny ourselves happiness for the sake of another
person or an impersonal cause, we do so ultimately
because it makes us happy.
In order to fulfil the desire for happiness, most people en-
gage in a relentless search in the realm of objects, sub-
stances, activities, states of mind and relationships. is
search also takes the form of resistance to whomever or
whatever is perceived to jeopardize our happiness. us,
seeking and resistance are the two main impulses that gov-
ern the thoughts and feelings, and the subsequent activities
and relationships, of most people.
e activities of seeking and resisting are an inevitable expres-
sion of the sense of lack or suffering that underlies them. How-
ever, most of us never question the origin of our suffering,
 b e in g awa re o f bei ng awa re

so busy are we escaping the discomfort of it through the ac-

quisition of objects, substances, activities, states of mind and
relationships. If we do question it, we usually attribute it to
the absence of the object or experience that we seek or the
presence of the situation we are attempting to avoid and, as
a result, never fully trace it back to its original cause.
Our belief that happiness is dependent on objective expe-
rience is not altogether without foundation, and hence its
almost universal allure, for every time a desired object is ac-
quired or an unpleasant situation successfully avoided, hap-
piness is indeed briefly experienced.
However, although the acquisition or avoidance of the ob-
ject or situation puts a temporary end to the suffering that
underlies it and, as a result, brings about a brief moment of
happiness, it does not uproot it or bring it to a permanent
end. It simply masks it.
No sooner does the object, substance, activity, state of mind
or relationship diminish or disappear, or the situation we
sought to avoid reappear, than the happiness vanishes and
the underlying suffering returns.
As a result, most people set out again in pursuit or rejection
of some form of objective experience in the hopes of repeating

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the experience of happiness. In this way we become ad-

dicted to the endless cycle of lack, seeking and temporary
fulfilment that characterises most people’s lives, and to
which Henry David oreau referred when he said that
most people ‘lead lives of quiet desperation’.
Many people spend their lives managing this despair more
or less successfully, medicating it with substances, numbing
it through the acquisition of objects, avoiding it through
exotic or meditative states of mind, or simply distracting
themselves from it with activities and relationships.
However, at some point, either spontaneously or, in most
cases, as a result of reading a book or having a conversation
with a friend, some people begin to question whether or
not objective experience can ever really be the source of the
lasting peace and happiness for which they long. Others
reach a point of desperation or hopelessness before this in-
tuition dawns.
Most people who are reading these words are doing so pre-
cisely because they have understood, or at least intuited,
that their desire for peace and happiness can never be found
in objective experience. In other words, if you are reading
this book it is most likely because objective experience has

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failed to provide peace and fulfilment sufficiently often that

the impulse to invest your identity, security and happiness
in it is beginning to wane.
is understanding or intuition is one of the most pro-
found and disturbing recognitions that one may have, and
it initiates a crisis whose exploration and resolution are the
subject matter of this book.

* * *
Once this recognition has taken place it is never possible to
invest our desire for lasting peace and happiness in objective
experience with quite the same conviction again. Although
we may forget or ignore it and, as a result, repeatedly return
to objective experience seeking fulfilment, our understand-
ing will impress itself upon us with greater frequency and
power, asserting its undeniable and unavoidable truth with
ever-increasing clarity, demanding to be heard. We turn
away from this intuition at our peril.
When objective experience – including any conventional
religious or spiritual practices that involve directing atten-
tion towards some more or less subtle object, such as an ex-
ternal god, a teacher, a mantra or the breath – has been
exhausted as a possible means by which peace and happiness

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may be obtained, only one possibility remains: to turn the

mind around upon itself and investigate its essential nature.
e turning of the mind away from the objective content
of experience towards the source or essence from which
it has arisen is the essence of meditation or prayer. It is
the ‘inward-facing path’ – sometimes referred to as self-
remembering, self-enquiry, self-abidance or the way of
surrender – of which the Direct Path that is explored in this
book is the culmination.
It is the process that is described in the story of the Prodigal
Son, in which the son leaves the security and comfort of his
father’s kingdom, explores all the possibilities that the
world, or objective experience, has to offer in terms of pleas-
ure and satisfaction, and eventually realises the futility of his
search. Finally he turns around towards the source of hap-
piness – symbolised here by his father – which was, in fact,
always available to him but seemingly out of reach due to
his exclusive fascination with the drama of experience.
In this giving up or turning around, we cease being obsessed
with our suffering and become interested in the nature of the
one who suffers. We turn away from the objects of experience
and investigate the nature of the one who experiences.

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In this investigation, as the mind turns the light of its know-

ing away from the objects of experience towards its own
essence, it is gradually, or occasionally suddenly, divested of
its limitations and stands revealed as the very peace and hap-
piness which it previously sought in objective experience.
Peace and happiness are not, as such, objective experi-
ences that the mind has from time to time; they are the
very nature of the mind itself. Happiness is our essential na-
ture, apparently obscured or eclipsed much of the time by
the clamour of objective experience but never completely
extinguished by it.
It is for this reason that all the great religious and spiritual
traditions indicate, in one way or another, that the ultimate
goal of life – lasting peace and happiness – resides within
us and is equally available to all people, at all times and in
all circumstances.

* * *
One might legitimately object to the statement that peace
and happiness are the essential nature of ourself, asking why,
if happiness is our essential nature, it is not always experi-
enced. Do we not experience happiness intermittently,
just as we do all other experiences? Are not happiness and

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unhappiness both objective experiences that arise and alter-

nate in awareness?
Imagine the sky as a uniform expanse of grey cloud on an
overcast day. At some point a small patch of blue opens up,
and soon numerous other small patches appear, each seem-
ingly unconnected from the others and each appearing and
disappearing in the expanse of grey cloud.
One could be forgiven for believing, at first sight, that the
natural condition of the sky was the unlimited expanse of
grey cloud and that the patches of blue were limited, tem-
porary appearances within it. It is only when the blue
patches are investigated that it becomes clear that they are,
in fact, windows onto the ever-present expanse of blue sky
in which the grey clouds temporarily appear and disappear.
Likewise, it may seem at first that moments of peace and
happiness briefly punctuate our natural state, which for
most people comprises a degree of lack or dissatisfaction
from which they are always in flight. However, if we make
a deep investigation of the nature of the mind,* that is, if
the mind investigates its own essential nature, travelling

* ‘Mind’ in this context is used synonymously with ‘experience’ and includes all
thinking, imagining, feeling, sensing and perceiving.

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back through layers of thought, feeling, sensation and per-

ception until it reaches its own essential, irreducible reality,
it will always find peace and fulfilment there.
Happiness, like the patch of blue, appears at first to be a
temporary experience that occurs from time to time, but
when investigated turns out to be ever-present and always
available in the background of experience.
As such, happiness is not a temporary experience that al-
ternates with unhappiness. It is not the opposite of unhap-
piness, any more than the blue sky is the opposite of the
clouds. Just as the clouds are the veiling of the blue sky, so
unhappiness is the veiling of happiness.
Happiness is our very nature and lies at the source of the
mind, or the heart of ourself, in all conditions and under all
circumstances. It cannot be acquired; it can only be revealed.
We cannot know happiness as an objective experience; we
can only be it. We cannot be unhappy; we can only know
unhappiness as an objective experience.

* * *
In the attempt to access the peace and happiness that lie
at the source or essence of ourself, most approaches to

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meditation recommend the controlling, focusing or watch-

ing of the mind. However, in this approach, meditation is
not about changing experience in any way, but rather seeing
clearly its essential nature.
e inward-facing path, or Direct Path, in which the mind
turns its attention away from objective experience towards
its own essence or reality, is, in my experience, best elabo-
rated in the Vedantic tradition, which details with great
precision both the philosophy and the practice of this in-
vestigation. In this way the Vedantic tradition provides di-
rect means for accessing the essential, irreducible nature of
one’s mind and the source of lasting peace and happiness.
However, it is inevitable that over the centuries the Vedantic
approach would have tailored itself to the level of under-
standing and the cultural conditioning of those to whom it
was addressed and, as a result, become mixed with elements
that are not essential to it.
e approach suggested in this book is, to the best of my
ability, the distilled essence of the Vedantic approach, di-
vested of the cultural packaging of the Eastern traditions in
which I and many others first encountered it. Of course,
this book is also subject to the cultural conditioning of its

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time, but given that most readers will share that condition-
ing, there is little chance that it will obscure or mystify the
understanding it conveys.
My first teacher, Dr. Francis Roles, once said to me, ‘e
truth needs to be reformulated by every generation’. It is
my hope that this book reformulates the Direct Path for
those who travelled to the East, intellectually if not physi-
cally, but found it difficult to extricate the simplicity of the
non-dual understanding from the wealth of exotic concepts
in which it was shrouded, as well as for a new generation of
truth seekers who are not burdened by previous religious
and spiritual teachings.
However, it is important to recognise that the inward-facing
path explored in this book is only half the journey. Once the
essential, irreducible nature of the mind has been recognised,
and its inherent peace and unconditional joy accessed, it is nec-
essary to face ‘outwards’ again towards objective experience, re-
aligning the way we think and feel, and subsequently act,
perceive and relate, with our new understanding.
e culmination of the inward-facing path is the recognition
of the presence, the primacy and the nature of awareness
– or, in religious language, spirit or God’s infinite being –

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which transcends all knowledge and experience. However,

it is not yet the full experiential understanding in which
awareness itself, or God’s infinite being, is known and felt
to pervade and saturate all knowledge and experience, and
indeed to be its sole substance and reality. It is to recognise
the transcendent nature of awareness but not its immanence.
If we do not reintegrate this understanding with our objec-
tive experience, then a fragile alliance will persist between
our essential, irreducible nature of pure awareness and all
objects and others. is often manifests as a denial or re-
jection of embodied life in the world and may readily be-
come a refuge for any lingering sense of a separate self.
e process by which this reintegration or establishment
takes place, although implicit in the inward-facing or
Vedantic tradition, is, in my opinion, best elaborated in the
Tantric tradition, and is an exploration that lies beyond the
scope of this book.*

* I refer anyone who would like to make a deeper exploration of this realignment
process to my collection of meditations, Transparent Body, Luminous World –
e Tantric Yoga of Sensation and Perception, published by Sahaja Publications.
For an expanded discussion of the place of the Tantric tradition in this approach,
please see e Nature of Consciousness – Essays on the Unity of Mind and Matter,
co-published by Sahaja Publications and New Harbinger Publications.

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