I am the Universal Consciousness

The curiosity and the sense of wonder in front of the wonder of the universe manifesting around me and in me, that has characterized my childhood, never abandoned me even as an adult. Ever since I was very young lots of questions arose in me: Why?, What?, What's in it?, How does it work ? I wanted to know the source of the universe, the nature of the stars, the moon, the sun, of all things, I asked myself what "I" was, and what the perceiving itself was. I found that trying to understand the universe and its intimate nature observing everything closely, I became one with it and I entered in a particularly vibrant silence in which I could explain anything without words and in which I seemed to be an ever-watchful presence, attentive, watching impassively everything, even myself, and that pleasant presence was in the whole world, it was the whole world. I have searched all my life the meaning of existence itself and I have kept asking myself the question: What the hell is all this? with the same genuine curiosity that a child has. When I was little more than a teenager a good friend of mine gave me a book that changed my life. The book's title was "The Tao of Physics" by Fritjof Capra in which the author starting from a scientific approach, that was anyway my approach and the only one I knew to be a real good approach, compares the modern scientific theories about the universe with the major eastern religions. A world that was only temporarily and only partially forgotten, growing up, opened to me. When I read about meditation, Zen, Satori etc. I recognized them like a dejavu. I already knew, in one way, those things and I was understanding that very fast as if I had always known. The famous Zen Koan "If a tree falls in the forest, makes noise if there is no one present?" reminded me my contemplations and all the questions I had tried to answer many years before. I started to read books about every eastern religion avidly. First of all with Buddhism and especially Zen Buddhism that I found and I find amazing and familiar, for the way in which it rejects any type of verbal and mental approach to the fundamental questions about the meaning of existence. I read about the various and best-known masters and gurus, and about every existing doctrine. I started to sit and to practice without any guidance but my inner Guru. I had consciously become a spiritual seeker aspiring to the enlightenment. More than 15 years of search passed in which small or great spiritual experiences happened. I spent years struggling to keep the silence of the mind or trying to have a behavior rather than another. The various doctrines have a certain fixed idea about what enlightenment is, so I started to try to reach that particular condition, trying to fix the knowledge that was already inside me, and gradually rose on the surface from my childhood, everything I had learned and experienced later in my adult search and any concepts of liberation, nirvana, awakening or whatever you want to call it, in the various doctrines. Some experiences in particular have marked my search. One day it happened that talking to a person about doctrines that assert that the ego is an illusion, while I was saying emphatically that I was, in theory, actually moving and gesturing and talking, without any control, suddenly happened a separation: there really was something that was watching this puppet moving pretending consciousness and knowledge. the puppet was not me. The puppet suddenly appeared to me really automatic. I, whatever I was, was not the thing that moved and spoke but the one who was watching, detached but amused. There was nobody deciding the sequence of my words, my perfect grammar or syntax used or the hands and body gesturing. Everything was happening spontaneously and without any control. This sudden realization provoked in me very joy and surprise. I laughed to see what is happening and while I was describing what was going on, I could see the automatic behavior of what I thought I was, I could clearly see the illusion of what we usually believed to be the owner. This experience changed everything. One of the questions that I tried to give an answer: Who decides? Comes to an and: I'm not the one who decide things and yet there was decision happening and expressing through myself. A koan was solved and vanished in an instant, leaving a wonderful sense of freedom. The way I approched life, the choices, the duties, the pleasures were permanently changed but remained the desire to possess that realization. Everything that I had read about enlightened masters told me that something was missing, a specific and definitive state, without friction and suffering, but I couldn't force myself to reach it after realizing that there is no one here who acts independently. I have repeatedly tried to find some living guru to remove my doubts, but, every time I thought it seriously, I realized that I hadn't no real question to ask. I already had any verbal answer and I didn't need to hear what I already knew. I would have to solve for myself, or better, I could only wait for it to be solved by itself. I removed all the books from my bedside table and I stopped trying to control my thoughts and I no longer sat in meditation. If there was no one in here I could not do anything anyway. I might as well live, doing experience and be carried away by events. Other changes occurred in my life radically and suddenly. I spent many years always travelling and trying all experiences that presented to me, but my innate curiosity were latent, and when the events of life led me to a new stability my search returned strongly to the surface and I come back to sit and study, but it was not like before. Other realizations have happened and my emotions have become more and more intense. I often cried just looking at a mountain or at the sea but not for sadness but lost, dazzled by the absolute beauty of them. I have spent days in which waves of pleasure travelled through my body. Not only in meditation, if I stopped a moment to listen to my heart I found it always full of joy, an overwhelming joy till the explosion. Sometimes the world around me seemed to me so strange, alien. We always look around casually but now I looked everything thoroughly, deeply and everything took on a new light, the world was more bright, colorful. Walking in the woods I was often amazed by the beauty and strangeness of the landscape and the colors as if I had never seen them before: the sky so blue and the grass so green seemed to be no longer obvious and banal, it was, like I was on a alien planet and looking at an unknown landscape with never seen shapes and colors. More often looking at a tree swaying in the wind I felt that swaying happening in me, causing a sense of movement and vertigo, or hearing a sudden noise it seemed to come from inside me. All this happens till today. The truth of the Tat Tvam Asi has been deeply established in me. The sound and the vibration of Om, the primordial syllable, become a constant background, a source of peace, as well as the overwhelming joy in my heart that is always present. I have nothing more to look for. Now I know that there has never been anyone here looking for anything! This does not mean that I am a better person than I was, or that I'm better than any other person: there is nothing to improve, nothing to gain, there is no I-person imperfect and detached from the infinite and perfect reality. I am what I am and I neither can be in any other way. I have no moral duty, but I'm not immoral, I do not need to follow moral rules imposed by any doctrine or religion or any society but I know and understand the rules of society in which I live. I'm not without faults or a calm person that never gets angry, and always laughing, nor a saint sitting in contemplation and in eternal bliss: I am the Universal Consciousness (Aham Brahmasmi). (Monàs)