Realizing the Self...

"At the last doorway to enlightenment stands the ego's final challenge, which is the central core belief that it is the source and locus of not only identity but also of life itself. At that point, one is all alone and shorn of all protection or comforting props, belief systems, or even memory.

There is solely available within one's aura the high-frequency vibration of the consciousness of the Enlightened Teacher, with its encoded Knowingness. The last step is intuited as a finality from which no turning back is possible, and thus there is consternation at the absoluteness of the finality. Then arises the knowing to walk straight ahead, no matter what, for all fear is illusion.

As this last step is taken by the Spiritual Will, death is experienced, but the fierce anguish lasts for only a few moments. The death of the ego is the only actual death that one can possibly experience, in contrast to which the previous deaths of leaving the body were relatively trivial.

The experience of death is terminated by awe at the revelation of the Ultimate Reality—and then even the awe disappears and the Self transcends the duality of Existence versus Nonexistence, Allness versus Nothingness, and Omnipresence versus Void."

"The serious student needs to know well in advance that at the very last doorway, he will be confronted by his willingness to surrender life itself—or at least that which has been believed since the beginning of evolution to be the very core of life itself.

This final gateway is very rarely passed, and one reason is the lack of preparation, the lack of certainty, and a final doubt of major magnitude."


- David Hawkins, from the last 2 pages of "Dissolving the Ego, Realizing the Self"