The Kenopanishad offers a timeless insight: consciousness is the unseen reality behind all seeing—like the eye that sees everything but cannot see itself. Consciousness is the very condition for all experience, yet remains untouched by what it illumines.
Consider an analogy offered by Bhagavan Krishna in Chapter 9 of the Bhagavad Gita. He explains that the mighty wind, blowing everywhere, arises in the sky, exists in it, and eventually subsides within it — yet the sky remains unaffected. Similarly, pure consciousness is the substratum of all phenomena—what we call the world of names and forms are simply appearances within it. This metaphor invites us to look beyond names and forms to the silent presence in which they appear.
The Aparoksha Anubhuti—a manual for self-realization by Adi Shankaracharya—guides the seeker through a disciplined process of discovering this silent presence in us. We begin by tracing effects back to their causes. This journey leads us to see that consciousness alone pervades all experience. Just as space gives rise to a phenomenonal amount of activity without itself being altered, consciousness gives rise to all thoughts, perceptions, and actions while remaining ever the same.
But recognition at the level of thought is not enough. To truly realize this, we must let go—not only of the appearances, but even of the concept of causality itself. Just as space cannot be manufactured through the manipulation of elements, consciousness cannot be attained through causal striving. It is not the result of action, but the ever-present reality obscured by the belief in separation.
Why drop causality? Because cause-and-effect thinking sustains the illusion of separation—the idea that there is a doer and a deed, a seeker and a goal. As long as we cling to this dualistic framework, we miss the truth that all is One, that what seems like movement is simply play (lila) on the surface of the still.
When even this framework collapses, what remains is not a subject experiencing an object, but pure awareness itself—undivided, untouched, self-luminous.
This is the Kenopanishad’s final revelation: we cannot know consciousness as an object because we are consciousness. The eye cannot see itself, yet it is the source of all seeing. In the same way, we cannot turn consciousness into something we grasp, because it is the very Self—the one reality underlying all appearances.