What the Sufi practitioner longs to discover is the connection to and reality of Being. To do this we strive to find the self and transcend to forgotten levels of consciousness and knowing. As has been said, the self is found within the concentrated point of being within the heart. We may travel there, or begin to know this point by closing our eyes, focusing on the breath, and gradually bringing our awareness into the heart. Each of us who practices this exercise will have a unique experience. In this way we realize that the self is unique and individual.
Dr. Arthur J. Deikman writes about this concept of self that is beyond the senses or mental intellect: “When we consider the radically different nature of the observing self, it is apparent that some mode of knowing other than the senses or intellect is involved in that phenomenon. The senses and intellect provide content: sounds, vision, touch, ideas, memories, fantasies. But the observing self is outside content and thus outside intellect and sensation. It follows that a different type of knowing is involved, one we must designate as intuitive, or direct, knowing - knowing by being that which is known. We are awareness, and that is why we cannot observe it; we cannot detach ourselves from it because it is the core experience of self.”
Seyedeh Nahid Angha, Ph.D. teaches that each of us is given one thing in equal share, and that one thing is our existence. Each person has his or her own private experience of existence. Each has the opportunity to understand the knowledge of this existence, or to pass through life without truly living, with limited consciousness. Going back to the original levels of consciousness that were delineated by Bucke at the beginning of this paper (Sufism and Consciousness, Part I, Sufism: An Inquiry, Volume VIII, No. 3), I do not think any of us are unconscious. Some, however, choose to remain in a limited state or do not have the ability to move on to the next level.
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