The Caretaker Personality

In the process of meditation, we find that we are not one continuous personality, that we are not a body, that what our real being is, is light.

We are one continuous consciousness and this consciousness is a consciousness of light. This is our nature, our substance and our essence.

When you meditate very deeply and go inside yourself or experience yourself, that is all there is - one continuous, all-pervasive, perfect, all-blissful consciousness. When we have our eyes open, when we're in the world, we don't see that continuous consciousness in quite the same way that we do when we're in meditation. Rather, we see it in manifestation. All the peoples, places, beings and forms that you experience in this or any other world are supported by that continuous consciousness that is the soul of reality. Just as a great fleet of ships floats upon the ocean, supported by it, so all of life floats upon an essence, a fathomless essence.

All things arise from this essence, are sustained by it, float in it for a while and then one day they dissolve back into it. This essence is not physical, although it sustains the physical. It is not even spirit in the conventional sense of the term spirit. When most people say spirit, they're referring to what is termed the subtle physical or astral, the etheric planes of being. It is invisible and yet manifests itself in and through the visible. This is its mystery, the mystery of eternity.

In meditation, in self-discovery, we seek to make our mind quiet so that we can perceive this essence, this eternal reality which is existence. When you do this, a happiness and joy that is beyond description fills every atom of your being because there is such goodness, such completion in the source of life, in the essence, which Lao Tzu referred to as the tao, which some refer to as God, some nirvana. There is such completion and perfection there that all else seems immaterial, in the sense that we have gone into the very nature, into the very heart of existence, and there we are complete.

Whereas when we're in the world of women and men we see all around us division, partiality, cars running down the freeways, people talking, wars, birth, maturation, decay and death. Plants, forests, cities, slums, stars, all of the things that we are conversant with in the physical world, follow a cycle and this cycle is nature.

Nature is the outer reflection of the timeless perfection of existence, this ultimate intelligence, which has no parent, which has always been and will always be, which is beyond time, place and condition. Each day when you meditate, each day when you give more of yourself to others, you open a doorway to that which is always there but which you do not always perceive - your essence, that which completes you. When you get caught up in the storms of your passions and emotions, you forget. Already you have forgotten, since you came into this life, that which you came from. If you look really deeply inside yourself, not inside your body per se, but inside that which is your awareness, you will see - as you open up the cover of the book of your life and delve deeply into the chapters and pages - this all-luminous perfection.

As you become more conscious of this all-luminous perfection, as it's something that you still yourself in each day, you will find that it will have a great effect upon your life. You will find that you no longer exist in the planes of being, of awareness, that most human beings do. At first this may seem frightening or awesome because you observe, after your adventures in meditative consciousness, that your personality is dissolving or it might be more correct to say that your personality is only a shell, it's only a very thin cover.