A Provisional Definition of Awareness

Ultimately, awareness cannot be defined, but a provisional definition is offered here for the purpose of evoking an experiential understanding. Awareness is that with which everything is known and within which everything arises. In this first stage of understanding, we, awareness, recognise our self as the witness of experience, the knower of the known. That which knows is free of that which is known, just as a screen is free of the movie that appears on it. In the second stage, we see that awareness is that out of which everything is made; in fact, our experience is the activity of awareness. In the third stage, when we recognise our self as that, we begin to relate to the world in a way that is consistent with this felt understanding.