Since the term pure me is a crucial term to grasp the essence of our evolution into the soul, we decided to offer a short elucidation of the entirely unknown dimension of awakening to pure me. It would be an error to assume that we are just applying a new term to describe something old, already well integrated into the science of enlightenment. This is not the case. While there are many levels of awakening, some of them conceptualized by various traditions, the awakening of pure me is beyond the body of knowledge of the teachings on this planet. This is not to say that no one has ever experienced it; they just did not know what they experienced. If a soul is very mature spiritually, as a result of her expansion into the I am, she may awaken her pure me indirectly, not even knowing that she is doing it. However, even though it can awaken spontaneously, in most cases after arriving at one of the states of awakening, the pure me of that state (of consciousness, being, or heart) remains dormant. It is difficult to awaken something when we don’t even know it exists. And even if we are fortunate enough to awaken it by chance, not knowing what it is or even not registering it properly, we are unable to create the correct relationship of understanding and further evolution with it. Once again, we can see how vital is the role of intelligence and the correct conceptual understanding in the process of awakening. We can never separate awakening from intelligence because without intelligence there is no true awakening but a mere illusion of it, another facet of ignorance.

We do not use the term pure me arbitrarily. If someone is not able to relate to it correctly, it is not because the idea of pure me is itself unclear or too wide open for interpretation. It is in fact a very accurate description, coming as close as possible to the reality hidden behind it. In building spiritual vocabulary, at times we need to compromise when trying to find the right word within the limitations of language and the way words are commonly used. For instance, the term ‘I am’ is not very precise, but we use it for a lack of a better term and because it has been used traditionally for a long time. So in order to fill the gap of understanding and convey what we really mean when using that specific term, we simply make more effort to clarify its meaning. However, this is not the case with pure me. Someone who is living in the mind and has no connection to their soul will obviously have a hard time making sense of it, but the realization itself is very simple in its nature, as long as there is a clear intention in our intelligence to truly realize who we are.

Pure me is the deepest, most intimate, most subtle and elusive dimension of me. It is simply impossible for anyone to come even close to feel the meaning of this word without having access to I am. Pure me comes into existence only as the true subject to surrender to I am. Awakening of I am refers to opening one of the states beyond the mind. Each of these states functions as a bridge between me and universal energy. Since we can enter the impersonal existence through several doorways, there are three dimensions of I am that need to be awakened in each soul: I am of consciousness, I am of the heart, and I am of being. For instance, I am of consciousness is called that way because it serves as a bridge for our me into unity with universal consciousness, and additionally it allows our soul to awaken her own higher consciousness. I am is a bridge for me to transcend itself and at the same time it is the requisite energy the soul uses to solidify her identity. Hence, at times we use the term ‘I am of consciousness’ to describe the consciousness aspect of the soul or the identity of the soul on the level of consciousness. However, for I am to become our soul, it has to be embodied by our me, and it is precisely pure me which is doing this embodying.

If pure me is not realized, I am cannot be embodied and though one has access to the state beyond the mind, this is not enough to bridge the split between me and I am. Additionally, if me is not merged into I am, the realization of I am itself remains shallow, me cannot be transformed, and, above all, the soul cannot be actualized. We constantly encounter these problems among seekers who have shifted into one of the awakened states and have no clue what to do with it. If our relationship with awakening is incorrect, its evolutionary benefit is minimal or can even be detrimental to our further evolution both on the human and soul level.

Pure me comes into existence as the higher subject to the realization of I am. The lower subject is the observer. We have observed that the most common scenario when one awakens energetically to I am is that the observer is the only one in some kind of relationship to I am. But relating to I am from the observer is hardly a relationship at all. It is a relationship merely from the mind, which actually renders the awakening to I am entirely useless. For pure me to come into existence, not only do we need access to I am, but our real me has to begin to surrender to that I am. The only real me that is there, if it is there at all, is the conscious me. It is through the intention of conscious me to merge with I am that pure me is born, which is the emanation of conscious me into the soul.

In order to grasp the subtle identity of pure me, we need to experience a level of unity with I am. If me is just trying to surrender, this is not enough for pure me to emerge. It comes into existence as the subject to the union with I am. The moment we begin to experience a relative unity with I am, we must contemplate: Who is feeling I am? Who am I as the experiencer of I am? This is the confusing part for many adepts because to grasp their pure me, they need to separate the experience of me from that of I am. Here is the apparent paradox: to awaken pure me we need to merge with I am, but to awaken it even further we need to separate it in our intelligence from I am. Of course, we do not separate it energetically but rather through discriminating between two different dimensions within one state. This is extremely important not only in order to realize our pure me, but also to enter a much deeper relationship with I am. Even after being unified, me and I am remain in a relationship which constitutes the internal dynamics of being the soul. Our soul is not just a state of being – she is alive. Her identity is very dynamic. One of her main features is intelligence, and intelligence requires a subtle duality to function. Without duality at all, there is no intelligence and no consciousness; in fact, there is nothing at all.

The merging of pure me with I am is what allows our soul to awaken. However, if they are merged but our pure me is not met properly, the awakening of the soul cannot go very deep. There is the higher and the lower realization of the soul. In the higher awakening, the merging with I am is integrated with the concurrent awakening of pure me. Pure me constitutes the very consciousness of I am, which is the consciousness of the soul. This can be a bit misleading because sometimes we refer to the process of surrender into I am as me surrendering to consciousness. But initially when me is surrendering, it is surrendering, in fact, to I am not to consciousness since there is no consciousness there yet. However, on some level, speaking about surrender of me to consciousness is also a valid description because that I am is both the I am of the soul’s consciousness and, through its link to impersonal energy, a doorway to universal consciousness. One needs to have spiritual imagination to grasp these different ways of looking at the same natural process of unification of me into I am. There are no contradictions here but different angles of perception that in unison reflect the profound and most subtle nature of our evolution.

Pure me is what illuminates I am with the consciousness of me. In fact, it is pure me that makes the soul the soul. Without pure me there is no soul; there is nobody there, just a relative me living constantly split from the state beyond thinking. How profoundly our pure me is realized determines the depth of our soul-actualization. But looking from the other side, it is I am that allows our pure me to be transmuted into the consciousness of the soul. Without the foundation of impersonality, the soul cannot be realized. She is the meeting of personal and impersonal, presence and absence, being and non-being, consciousness of oneself and consciousness of existence. She is conscious of herself and conscious of her absence within the universal presence. She is the meeting of knowing and not-knowing.

After pure me has merged with I am, its momentum of surrender is not stopped. It continues to surrender through the doorway of I am into the dimension of absence. There are two portals of absence: the I am of consciousness and the I am of being. Through I am of consciousness, pure me reaches horizontal samadhi (behind the back of the head) with universal consciousness; through I am of being, pure me reaches vertical samadhi (through the tan t’ien in the lower belly) in the source, the absolute state. And even then, the momentum of its surrender does not stop; it continues deeper and deeper into the realm of absence and samadhi. However, while prior to merging with I am, pure me is surrendering as an extension of the conscious me, once our soul is realized, pure me continues its surrender as our soul. Now it fully belongs to the soul.

Pure me has to be awakened on three levels that correspond to the three aspects of the soul and the three dimensions of I am. While it is relatively easy to grasp the nature of pure me of consciousness as being the extension of conscious me due to their proximity in the headspace, it might be more difficult to meet our pure me on the level of heart and being. Prior to arriving at the more advanced states of vertical samadhi of consciousness and vertical samadhi of conscious me, conscious me cannot energetically extend itself into heart and being. Due to the lack of an energetic bridge, in order to enable the awakening of pure me, conscious me has to extend itself into these deeper dimensions of I am through pure attention. Pure attention is the higher attention (beyond the attention generated by the observer) that travels through all the centers of the soul without creating a split between subject and object. Pure attention is essentially the attention pertaining to pure me, but since pure me itself is an extension of conscious me, conscious me is directly linked to it as well.

On some level, awakening of the pure me of the heart can be easier due to the absence of mind. The fact that pure me of consciousness is very close to the mental self can cause initial confusion as to which me is which, and additionally the mental self tends to create a strong identification, pulling our attention back to the observer. In the heart, there is no observer; our heart is simply more innocent. However, even in the heart we need to create distinction between pure me and the psychological, emotional dimension of me. As the mind is constantly processing countless mental impressions, so the human heart is processing our human feelings. The human heart is very complex in its own way. Before our pure me can be awakened, the I am of the heart has to be activated. This relates directly to the energetic opening of our spiritual heart. If the heart remains closed, we simply have no access to it. The energetic depth of the heart, in separation from any relative feelings, is the I am of the heart. It is the pure, impersonal subjectivity of the heart: how the heart experiences itself alone. However, that internal space of the heart’s presence can only be properly met when the true subject of the heart is awakened: pure me.

For our soul to awaken, pure me has to embody the I am of the heart. And similar to consciousness, even after it has merged, pure me remains in a relationship of surrender with the I am of the heart. There is an unending meeting between pure me and I am, and continuous surrender of pure me through that I am into the beyond. The beyond to which the heart is a doorway is the divine dimension of the supreme reality. It is pure me which traverses through the heart of the soul into the heart of existence.

To meet pure me in the depth of our heart is the true awakening of the heart. Pure me is the radiant consciousness of the heart through which the heart can be realized as the state of love. There is no love without pure me. Pure me brings into the heart the quality of deep intimacy and the feeling of divinity. But before one can fully meet pure me, one has to gently step beyond identification with the sense of me tied to the emotional layers of the human heart. One has to surrender deeper, beyond human emotions, to awaken pure me and reach samadhi in the heart. Beyond all the fluctuations of feelings in the heart, there is the pure feeling of our existence. That pure feeling is the heart itself: the unity of pure me and I am.

To get deeper in touch with pure me, one may contemplate: Who is feeling the heart? What is the subtle difference between feeling the heart and feeling the one who is feeling the heart? Who is feeling love? When absorbed in that love, who is still present there, directly knowing its existence? Who is feeling the bliss of the heart? The pure me of being is the subject to surrender into the source of creation. Due to the absence of a naturally occurring sense of me on the level of being, whether mental or emotional, many find it challenging to awaken their pure me in this area. This is true especially because the state of being is opened only through vertical surrender, which tends to dissolve any sense of me even more. For this reason, it is very easy to assume that there is no one experiencing being. There is indeed no one as long as pure me is not realized. Without realizing pure me, we can never embody being as our soul; the realization of being remains limited, serving merely as an access to the space of vertical abidance and rest.

Awakening of pure me on the level of being is essential in order to realize our correct relationship with the dimension of the source. Pure me is in fact the one who enters the absolute and the one who realizes the absolute state, which is the unity of pure me and the absolute.

When the basic depth of being is established, one needs to contemplate: Who is feeling being? Who is feeling the experience of rest and, through letting go of itself and as itself, is resting more and more? Who is letting go? Who remains when the descension into being stops and one is fully absorbed? One has to tell apart the experience of being from who one is as the subject to it, the experiencer. Pure me is the true experiencer of being. Of course, we feel being with our whole existence, from all our centers, but pure me of being is the one who is directly touching being, feeling it intimately while being merged with it. Pure me of being is simply the nearest aspect of our existence to the source. Pure me is the one who feels the peace, freedom, and bliss of samadhi in the absolute. After pure me has embodied being, being is integrated into the soul, becoming an intrinsic aspect of her identity. Being constitutes both the body of the soul and her doorway to transcendence. As with consciousness and heart, merging with the I am of being is not the end of our surrender. Upon entering the realm of absence through the portal of I am, pure me continues its never-ending surrender into the bottomless source of creation. But now, it no longer surrenders to reach surrender – it lives in the state of surrender; its existence is fully relocated to the home of the absolute.

As the three dimensions of pure me are awakened, they need to be gradually integrated through the merging of the three centers of the soul. However, even when they become unified, they retain their unique qualities, and one may be more pronounced than the other according to the need of the situation. At times the soul chooses to emphasize more consciousness, sometimes heart or being. At other times, they are all engaged with equal strength. Consciousness, being, and heart are the three limbs of the soul. The function of pure me is to embody them so they can be established as the identity of our multidimensional self. Awakening of pure me is the first step in awakening of our soul and, hence, the first step towards our universal evolution. It needs to be seen and appreciated that our universal evolution actually begins with creating a relationship of love and intimacy with the innermost dimension of me. Awakening of pure me is the blossoming of individual evolution that manifests from the place of truly honoring not just our transcendence but who we are. To actualize our pure me within the context of soul-awakening is to become a true human being.

Blessings, Aadi

For a glossary of the terminology used in this teaching and for further resources, you may visit our website www.Aaditeaching.com

Click here for a printable version of this article.