Journey to Enlightenment

This book concerns the “non-sectarian” and generic theme of “Enlightenment”. The term “Enlightenment” as used herein refers to the act of comprehension that moves one from the state of ego-separation to that of unity. This is the sense of unity and identity with the one source or Consciousness from which all derives. This is also known by many other terms but perhaps the most striking is: “God Consciousness”. It is the sudden (or perhaps gradual) comprehension of the infinitely deep-rooted but often obscured relationship between the personal self (the ego-self) and its true source. Following true personal comprehension of this identity, nothing about the way in which one regards the world, the objective world of appearance, can ever be the same. In an instant the concept of time is destroyed and the individual is quite naturally obliged to assume full responsibility for being here and now.
The author was formally trained in the discipline of Science and spent his working-life as an environmental scientist. His foray into the area of self-analysis and subsequent projection into the profound provoked a complete reversal of his previously solid view of external physicality now finding complete agreement with Sri Ramana in observing “That the world and the mind arise as one but of the two the world depends on the mind alone the only reality being that in which this inseparable pair have their rising and setting – The One Self Alone”.
Perhaps to begin with some explanation as to the nature of the world in which you (apparently) find yourself is in order. This is because what you think you see outside of yourself is not what you may have been conditioned (taught) to understand at all, far from it, in point of fact. This so-referenced exterior is also sometimes called the objective external. In short, the "objective world" and your body are actually one and the same thing. This is so since the body is made up of the elements (the basic bits, fundamental particles, energy states and so forth) which also make-up the so called external world. Thus, we can term the state described above as constituting the "objective world" viewpoint.
However, there is another way of looking at "things" but to see this we must first of all change at least one of the terms we use. Instead of saying that the outside world is "real" we can say that it is merely "consistent". That is to say, in its essence, and from time to time, it continues to have much the same character as was previously the case. By making this switch we can use the word "reality" to stand for something else entirely and that is the force, the essence, the very foundation upon which the consistent world appears to be built. Or, we may say reality is that from which, the world and indeed everything, including ourselves, has emerged. It is "that from which all (ourselves, atoms, trees, atomic particles, space, electrical energy states and so forth) emerges" and it is that to which all, everything, (ultimately) returns. The term "God" may also be employed to address this state.
Nothing new here you may say. But, look very hard at the personal self or more properly at its immediately apparent origin and cradle namely the mind. Without the mind there is no externality, that is, there is no external world as such. This is because the so called external world is merely a function of the Mind. Without the mind, the external world does not exist. The consistency that we call the external world arises only as the result of activity expressed by the mind. The world thus takes its primary form merely through "agreement" reached between and among individual personal selves. You are not a consciousness wandering round within an external objective world but indeed are the container-consciousness within which the whole of the so called external arises