Does Consciousness Manifest to Know Itself?

"You’ve said that when you were seven, you told your mother the world was God’s dream, and our task was to make that dream as beautiful as possible. Is there an energy that wants to recognise itself, and everything is just an attempt or experiment to recognise itself? Rupert says: ‘That’s not consciousness’s purpose. Consciousness knows itself by nature. It doesn’t need to do anything to recognise itself. It’s like the sun, self-knowing, self-luminous. Consciousness doesn’t manifest in order to know itself. That’s like suggesting that John Smith plays the part of King Lear so that he can know himself. Consciousness manifests as each of us in order to know the world. It knows the world through our perceiving faculties. It cannot know itself through our perceiving faculties, because our perceiving faculties bestow their own limitations on everything that is perceived through them. John Smith can know Cordelia through King Lear, but he can’t know himself through King Lear. He knows himself by himself. By itself, consciousness knows itself, but by itself it can’t know the world. It’s only through the agency of our individual minds that consciousness can know itself as the universe. Consciousness needs a finite mind in order to know the world. It doesn’t need a finite mind in order to know itself.’"

From event 30 August - 06 September, 2025 Seven-Day Retreat at Mandali, 30 August–6 September 2025

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