In the Introduction to Consciousness Speaks, by Ramesh S. Balsekar, formerly the President of the Bank of India and an Advaita sage, Wayne Liquorman, its editor, wrote, “All there is, is Consciousness. If that is understood completely, deeply, intuitively then you need read no further. Put the book down and go on joyously with the rest of your life.”

Consciousness is thus the Totality of Existence, which is the meaning of this word in Panosophy. However, as Consciousness is Ineffable, embracing all opposites in Nonduality, it can only really be understood through figurative metaphors much used by people to describe their mystical experiences.

First, we can view Consciousness as the Ocean of Consciousness, a great multidimensional ball of water, whose centre is Stillness, the Absolute, the Divine Source of Life and of all existence, which we can call the Godhead. When we live in union with the Godhead, we realize Oneness in Unity Consciousness. The surface of the Ocean of Consciousness is the physical universe of our senses.

In between the surface and the centre lies the Cosmic Psyche, a multitude of nonphysical energies that mostly cause us to behave as we do. When we learn to integrate all knowledge into a coherent whole, individual consciousness deepens and expands to such an extent that it becomes coterminous with Cosmic Consciousness, as Wholeness, the entire ocean. The Ocean of Consciousness is thus an extension of the concept of the holomovement, which David Bohm introduced in Wholeness and the Implicate Order to unify the incompatibilities between quantum and relativity theories.

Secondly, we can view Consciousness like a sun, whose rays radiate from the centre, again our Divine Source. But the light from this sun is not scattered or dispersed, like the light from the Sun; it is coherent, rather like the light from a laser. When we use the coherent light of Consciousness to view the Totality of Existence, we can use our Divine Self-reflective Intelligence to view the Universe holographically, seeing that every part encapsulates the same underlying structure as the Whole.